Are U.S. business users connecting their tablets to mobile networks? You might think not, as up to this point most tablets seem to be the Wi-Fi-only models. But business users of technology behave differently than consumer users.
For starters, many business users have their devices and services subsidized by their employers. That means business users tend to spend more, and use more "for fee" services, than consumers tend to use.
You might wonder whether those changes hold for tablet use as well. Most consumers, studies suggest, buy and use their tablets with Wi-Fi connections, and tend not to buy mobile broadband subscriptions.
But iGR says a recent survey of information technology managers in small and medium businesses in the United States suggests that might not be the case for smaller business tablet users. .
More than half of the survey respondents said they use a tablet today, and the majority of those said their company either purchase or paid for the device.
IT personnel are, by definition, “more technical” than other business personnel, so when the respondents were asked whether they had ever activated their 3G or 4G mobile broadband connection, defined as having purchased at least one month’s service from the cellular operator, more than 80 percent said they had used the 3G or 4G service at some point, and 25 percent had signed a contract for the service, iGR says.
This does not mean of course that this number of tablet SMB users connect to mobile data every month, iGR says. But clearly an influential group of users are connecting in significant numbers. At the very least, the survey suggests that the majority of SMB IT users are buying tablets with the 3G/4G modem included.
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