CIOs to Tablets: It’s Business Time
The tablet isn’t yet a standard-issue sidearm in enterprise, but it’s quickly becoming one — led by Apple’s iPad. Indeed, with the “bring your own device” (BYOD) movement gaining momentum, tablets are no longer simply infiltrating the enterprise market, they’re marching right in.
To wit, Barclays’ latest CIO survey, which shows the so-called “consumerization of IT” in full swing. The research house polled 100 CIOs — 65 in the U.S. and 35 in Europe — across varied industries, and found a solid uptick in tablet adoption.
A staggering 93 percent of respondents noted some level of interest in tablets, with 40 percent saying the devices are already in use at their companies, and another 36 percent saying they were either trialing or testing them. Interestingly, 40 percent of respondents described tablets as an incremental hardware purchase. Another 40 percent said the tablets they purchased would be used to replace laptops.
And what sorts of tablets are these folks buying or trying? They run the gamut, really — with a strong leaning toward the market leader.
“Apple was the vendor most often cited, but there was also interest in Microsoft and Android tablets as well (RIM fell from our prior survey),” Barclays analyst Ben Reitzes explains. “We believe that given Apple’s strength in the smartphone and tablet markets the company is seeing higher rates of adoption in the enterprise market as a result of the BYOD trend.”
All of this, of course, bodes well for the tablet market and for Apple, which continues to drive it — particularly with corporate spending on tablets clearly on the rise.
And now, for your listening pleasure, Flight of the Conchords, with “Business Time”: