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Mobile vs. PC - Traditional PC Still Device of Choice in Business

Pete Goldin
Editor and Publisher
APMdigest

While business investments in smartphones and tablets are growing in some cases, the vast majority of employees still use laptops and desktops as their primary work device, and organizations aren’t planning to shift investments away from traditional PCs in the foreseeable future, according to The Future of the PC, a new study by Spiceworks.

Among organizations surveyed, an average of 60 percent of employees currently use desktops as their primary work device. Laptops are used by 27 percent of employees as their primary device, followed by thin clients (5 percent), tablets (3 percent), smartphones (2 percent), and 2-in-1s (2 percent).

In terms of future business investments, the results indicate that while desktop investments are expected to be relatively flat in the next 12 months, 43 percent of businesses expect to increase their laptop investments. Mobile devices, such as tablets (25 percent), smartphones (16 percent), and 2-in-1s (18 percent) are expected to see about half the growth of laptops.

“Although many predict the popularity of mobile devices will lead to the ‘death of the PC,’ this prophecy won’t become a reality anytime soon in the corporate world,” said Peter Tsai, Senior Technology Analyst at Spiceworks. “It’s true that desktop PCs will become less prevalent in the near future, giving way to laptops, but tablets and smartphones still face usability challenges that prevent them from enabling key tasks in the workplace. So for the foreseeable future, traditional PCs will remain dominant while tablets and smartphones serve as complementary devices.”

Among IT professionals who influence the purchase decisions of end user devices at their organization, 53 percent believe most employees will not use a mobile device as their primary device in the foreseeable future. Respondents who think it could happen believe a mobile-dominated workplace is at least three to five years off.

As to why organizations are sticking with laptops and desktops, the research shows IT professionals believe mobile devices are adequate for browsing the web and viewing documents, but more limited when it comes to other business functions, such as inputting data, and creating, editing, and saving documents.

Spiceworks also examined what factors IT professionals deem most important when choosing the PC brands to buy for their organization. The results show computer reliability is the most important factor.

87 percent of IT professionals said reliability is very to extremely important in the decision-making process, followed by performance (68 percent), security (62 percent), and cost (54 percent). Other factors, such as manageability (48 percent), user-friendliness (42 percent), and ease of repair (37 percent), were considered slightly less important, but innovative features (9 percent) and style (4 percent) were considered the least important factors.

Methodology: The survey was conducted in July 2017 and included 998 IT professionals across the US, Canada, and the UK who influence the purchase decisions of end user devices at their organization. Respondents represent a variety of company sizes, including small- to-medium-sized businesses and enterprises. Respondents also come from a variety of industries including manufacturing, healthcare, nonprofits, education, retail, government, and finance.

Pete Goldin is Editor and Publisher of APMdigest

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Mobile vs. PC - Traditional PC Still Device of Choice in Business

Pete Goldin
Editor and Publisher
APMdigest

While business investments in smartphones and tablets are growing in some cases, the vast majority of employees still use laptops and desktops as their primary work device, and organizations aren’t planning to shift investments away from traditional PCs in the foreseeable future, according to The Future of the PC, a new study by Spiceworks.

Among organizations surveyed, an average of 60 percent of employees currently use desktops as their primary work device. Laptops are used by 27 percent of employees as their primary device, followed by thin clients (5 percent), tablets (3 percent), smartphones (2 percent), and 2-in-1s (2 percent).

In terms of future business investments, the results indicate that while desktop investments are expected to be relatively flat in the next 12 months, 43 percent of businesses expect to increase their laptop investments. Mobile devices, such as tablets (25 percent), smartphones (16 percent), and 2-in-1s (18 percent) are expected to see about half the growth of laptops.

“Although many predict the popularity of mobile devices will lead to the ‘death of the PC,’ this prophecy won’t become a reality anytime soon in the corporate world,” said Peter Tsai, Senior Technology Analyst at Spiceworks. “It’s true that desktop PCs will become less prevalent in the near future, giving way to laptops, but tablets and smartphones still face usability challenges that prevent them from enabling key tasks in the workplace. So for the foreseeable future, traditional PCs will remain dominant while tablets and smartphones serve as complementary devices.”

Among IT professionals who influence the purchase decisions of end user devices at their organization, 53 percent believe most employees will not use a mobile device as their primary device in the foreseeable future. Respondents who think it could happen believe a mobile-dominated workplace is at least three to five years off.

As to why organizations are sticking with laptops and desktops, the research shows IT professionals believe mobile devices are adequate for browsing the web and viewing documents, but more limited when it comes to other business functions, such as inputting data, and creating, editing, and saving documents.

Spiceworks also examined what factors IT professionals deem most important when choosing the PC brands to buy for their organization. The results show computer reliability is the most important factor.

87 percent of IT professionals said reliability is very to extremely important in the decision-making process, followed by performance (68 percent), security (62 percent), and cost (54 percent). Other factors, such as manageability (48 percent), user-friendliness (42 percent), and ease of repair (37 percent), were considered slightly less important, but innovative features (9 percent) and style (4 percent) were considered the least important factors.

Methodology: The survey was conducted in July 2017 and included 998 IT professionals across the US, Canada, and the UK who influence the purchase decisions of end user devices at their organization. Respondents represent a variety of company sizes, including small- to-medium-sized businesses and enterprises. Respondents also come from a variety of industries including manufacturing, healthcare, nonprofits, education, retail, government, and finance.

Pete Goldin is Editor and Publisher of APMdigest

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The Latest

As businesses increasingly rely on high-performance applications to deliver seamless user experiences, the demand for fast, reliable, and scalable data storage systems has never been greater. Redis — an open-source, in-memory data structure store — has emerged as a popular choice for use cases ranging from caching to real-time analytics. But with great performance comes the need for vigilant monitoring ...

Kubernetes was not initially designed with AI's vast resource variability in mind, and the rapid rise of AI has exposed Kubernetes limitations, particularly when it comes to cost and resource efficiency. Indeed, AI workloads differ from traditional applications in that they require a staggering amount and variety of compute resources, and their consumption is far less consistent than traditional workloads ... Considering the speed of AI innovation, teams cannot afford to be bogged down by these constant infrastructure concerns. A solution is needed ...

AI is the catalyst for significant investment in data teams as enterprises require higher-quality data to power their AI applications, according to the State of Analytics Engineering Report from dbt Labs ...

Misaligned architecture can lead to business consequences, with 93% of respondents reporting negative outcomes such as service disruptions, high operational costs and security challenges ...

A Gartner analyst recently suggested that GenAI tools could create 25% time savings for network operational teams. Where might these time savings come from? How are GenAI tools helping NetOps teams today, and what other tasks might they take on in the future as models continue improving? In general, these savings come from automating or streamlining manual NetOps tasks ...

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A large majority (86%) of data management and AI decision makers cite protecting data privacy as a top concern, with 76% of respondents citing ROI on data privacy and AI initiatives across their organization, according to a new Harris Poll from Collibra ...

According to Gartner, Inc. the following six trends will shape the future of cloud over the next four years, ultimately resulting in new ways of working that are digital in nature and transformative in impact ...

2020 was the equivalent of a wedding with a top-shelf open bar. As businesses scrambled to adjust to remote work, digital transformation accelerated at breakneck speed. New software categories emerged overnight. Tech stacks ballooned with all sorts of SaaS apps solving ALL the problems — often with little oversight or long-term integration planning, and yes frequently a lot of duplicated functionality ... But now the music's faded. The lights are on. Everyone from the CIO to the CFO is checking the bill. Welcome to the Great SaaS Hangover ...

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