Email Matches Voice On Readers’ Devices

Email is just as important as voice on IT people’s devices, with texting and web news-gathering following closely behind, according to a poll by eWEEK Europe.

When we asked “what business tasks do you perform on your mobile device?” email was the most popular alongside voice, both on 17 percent, proving what we all know – that phones now double as data devices, and communication is shifting from voice to text and other forms of data .

As tablets are still a small market compared to phones, we assume the majority of respondents were talking about phones – though we wanted to include both in this poll, to find what tasks have mobilised.

News gathering scores highly

The shift to mobile data has been described as a problem for operators who have to deal with a surge in demand, or a boon if they can get money from the new traffic.

The change would be a boon for RIM’s Blackberry which initially specialised in email – but all smartphones now handle email smoothly, and RIM is looking worried.

Texting is still popular, only half a percentage point behind the leaders, on 16.5 percent.

Research and reading the news came next on 13 percent – and growing traffic on the mobile version of our site (accessible on any smartphone) bears this out.

Social media scored slightly lower than we expected, but was still substantial, with 10.5 percent using it on the go, just ahead of instant messaging on 9.5 percent.

Six percent of you use your mobile device to take pictures for work (we think that “for work” is the operative term there) and only a very few of you perform more complex tasks such as e-commerce or specialist applications like ERP and CRM.

In the “Other” category some of you mentioned CMS (content management systems), systems management and navigation.

Which social network is best for business?

Next, we want to know the answer to the question everyone is asking. Which is better, Google+ or Facebook?

We’re thinking of business users here, so tell us which is the best social network for you. Maybe you prefer Twitter, or LinkedIn, or business-centric options like Jabber, Tibbr or Salesforce Chatter?

You might want to stick to the IT-specific Spiceworks, of course – but if you prefer “the pub” or “the phone”, tell us in the “Other” category.