The BYOD, or bring-your-own-device, trend has grown: A new report from iPass shows that more employees are using their own smartphones for work, and they rank connectivity cost as the least important factor when choosing a mobile network. iPass, a Wi-Fi and enterprise mobility services company, said that this creates the potential for “bill shock” for enterprises that don’t have cost control policies as part of their BYOD plan.
Availability and speed are most important features in mobile network. The report says mobile workers’ desire for constant, high-quality connectivity is well established, and network availability mattered most followed by the speed of the network when selecting a mobile network.
The report reveals that the proportion of employee smartphones provisioned by employers has declined from 58% to 33%, while self-provisioning is now at 46%, up from 42% last year. Smartphones are at the center of mobile workers’ lives, ranking only behind wallets and keys as the most important items they carry. And their network of choice is Wi-Fi.
The iPass report notes that the profile of the most popular enterprise smartphones has changed as employees have increasingly taken ownership of their own devices for work. The study found that the iPhone remains in the top spot with 53% of the mobile workforce using the Apple phones, up from 45% in 2011. Android was chosen by 34% of mobile workers, up from 21% in 2011, and has taken the second place from BlackBerry, which is now the device of choice for just 26% of mobile workers, down from 32% in 2011.
 
Windows Phone remains in the last place of major operating systems with just 5% of mobile workers currently using the Microsoft-based phones. When asked about other mobile devices, 59% of mobile workers said that they expect to rely on tablets more in the coming year with the iPad leading as the preferred device for 54% of workers.
According to Gartner’s latest numbers, Android leads mobile device sales to end users by operating system with 72.4% by the end of third quarter, followed by iOS (13.9%) and RIM (5.3%).
The report also found that Wi-Fi is the network of choice for 52% of mobile workers, but one out of every two workers complained that finding simple access to Wi-Fi networks outside the office hinders their productivity, whereas in 2011, only 33% of mobile workers described this as a barrier to successful mobile working.
According to the study, 34% named application access as a problem, making it the second largest barrier to productivity.
