One In Eight Readers Has A Tablet For Work

Despite doubts about tablets as a business tool, one in eight eWEEK Europe readers has one for work, according to a new poll.

Since Apple launched the iPad as a consumer device, businesses have debated whether to adopt tablets. Gartner says enterprises should get in early to understand the platform, and AMI Partners say this is happening, while a poll on eWEEK Europe found that 12 percent of readers have a tablet for work.

Tablets – A Complementary Technology

We listed a variety of combinations of mobile devices, and  12 percent of you responded that you had a tablet, in combination with either a laptop or a phone.

The majority of these will be iPads, although numerous vendors have business-oriented tablets, including Cisco Cius, the RIM PlayBook, and HP’s WebOS tablet.

It seems from our study that tablets are complementing, rather than displacing, phones. Only two percent of the respondents had a tablet and a phone, while the majority of tablet users were lucky souls, able to get the combination of all three devices, laptop, phone and tablet.

More than half the respondents (55 percent) had a phone provided by their work , while 47 percent or more had laptops.

The laptop figure is wrong unfortunately as the option for “laptop only” dropped out of the poll when it was put on the site. Almost all people voting for “Other” had just a laptop.

The most surprising result, is that the top answer, around 39 percent of respondents, had no mobile devices at all provided by their work.  This could mean they have a “bring your own device” policy, or that many companies are tightening their purse strings and cutting down on employee benefits.

Next: Windows 8 – will it rock?

IT people are looking forward to several things. One of these is the Royal Wedding of course, and there are also new iPhones, iPads and other stuff coming.

Alongside all that, the arrival of a new version of Windows may not be generating the same level of excitement. After all the last version, Windows 7,  is most famous for not being as bad as the previous version, Vista. The advertising slogan “Windows 7 was my idea”, could be paraphrased as “Why didn’t Microsoft think of that?”

Anyway, Microsoft is very keen to tell people that Windows 8 will be interesting, and so is promoting a myriad of ideas for it. How about a Kinect-based natural user interface , a tablet version which will run on ARM chips, cloud integration, or an App Store ?

Or does all this leave you as cold as an anarchist at Westminster Abbey? Maybe you are committed to Macs or Linux, or even to earlier Windows versions.

Whatever your thoughts, let us know in the poll.