While tough economic conditions mean IT departments are facing increasing scrutiny over tech purchases, UK companies are still keen on smartphones and all they can bring the enterprise.
However, the innate conservatism in corporate IT means there is still some resistance to more advanced, idiosyncratic devices such as the iPhone.
ZDNet UK's survey of nearly 400 UK IT professionals shows that more than half of their companies had deployed smartphones in the enterprise, with a further 14 percent either planning or considering rolling out the devices. Of those companies that are already using the devices, 38 percent said they were planning to increase that use, while 26 percent said they had no plans to expand the number of devices at the moment.
Only 25 percent of those surveyed said they were not using smartphones, or had considered it and decided not to. Those who had adopted enterprise smartphones said that email, scheduling, IM and web access were the main driving forces, while the main drawback cited by those businesses that decided against smartphones was expense.
Approximately 52 percent of IT pros surveyed said that 'smart' came at too high a price, with concerns about security also a deal-breaker for 19 percent of respondents.
There was even support for the deeply unfashionable personal digital assistant, or PDA, long since considered nearly extinct in the rest of the world. "Better to have simple functional phone and separate iPaq," one respondent said.
When asked specifically about ownership of the smartphones in their business, 35 percent of respondents said they had bought the device, while a further 27 percent said they were given the handset with a service plan. Of the respondents who said they owned their own smartphone, the vast majority — 89 percent — said they used it for work.
Moving on to which specific types of smartphones are finding favour with UK plc at the moment, HTC proved the most popular, with 19 percent of the IT professionals surveyed; followed by Nokia at 18 percent; and Blackberry at 16 percent. This hierarchy was also reflected when respondents were asked about which phone operating system their companies favoured. Windows Mobile, which runs on the majority of HTC phones, came in at 47 percent, followed by RIM's OS and Symbian.
The G1 Android was used by around two percent of respondents, with other also-rans including Palm, Sony, Samsung and Motorola.
Which leaves Apple's iPhone. While the hype around the handset might have suggested greater uptake, around 14 percent of respondents said they were using Apple's smartphone. That is five percent behind the leader, HTC, which can be seen as either very impressive, given Apple's legendary coolness towards...
