"Mobile Elite" Finds They Must Supply Their Own Tools

“Consumerization,” the trend of employees using personal devices and cloud services for work, not only is widespread, but also shows a trend at work for more than a decade, namely that although “enterprise” information technology traditionally has been more advanced than consumer tools, that now is reversed, in many ways.

A study by Forrester Research suggests that more employees have better technology at home than they have at work. Today, 52 percent of all global workers Forrester Research surveyed, and 62 percent of younger employees, feel that they have better technology at home than at work.

“When we analyzed the data on information workers, we found that a subset of highly connected mobile employees is also using multiple personal devices and applications,” Forrester Research says. Forrester calls this group of employees the “mobile elite.”

“Mobile elite workers are those who make the most intensive use of multiple personally acquired technologies for work and who use them for improving their work with customers and business partners. Those technologies include smartphones, tablets, home computers, and non-authorized software applications and web/cloud services.”

What makes them elite? It starts with their willingness to spend their own money for work: 58 percent  buy the devices and applications that help them to be productive and to collaborate with customers, partners, and other employees, Forrester Research says.

That trend also has been described by other studies.

About 16 percent of respondents pay for their own smart phones used for work. Some eight percent purchased their own tablets and use them for work. Some 35 percent of respondents use their own home computer for work purposes. About 38 perent use software that is not specifically authorized by their employers.

These mobile elite users wind up relying on personally procured technology for work because they need to, not because they just want to, Forrester Research says.

Twenty-seven percent of the information workforce uses two or more personally procured technologies, including personal cloud apps, personal smartphones, tablets, and home computers, to get work done.

Among employees who use unauthorized personal apps and sites, more than half do it to get work done; “because I needed it and my company didn’t provide an alternative,” Forrester Research says.


In fact, one of the reasons some think consumer technology is more important or disruptive than traditional enterprise technology is precisely this transformation of roles. In the past, advanced technology has been adopted first by enterprises, then mid-market firms, then medium and small business and finally consumers.

These days, advanced technology increasingly is created first for consumers, and then adapted for enterprise use.

Mobile Shopping Reaches $20 Billion

Mobile purchasing now represents $20.7 billion worth of shopping using mobile devices, Javelin Strategy and Research reports. 

About $5 billion of mobile purchases were made through tablets in 2011. The number of people owning tablets is expected to more than double within the next three years, which should lead to an explosion in retail purchasing using tablet devices. 

U.S. VoLTE Delayed Until 2013 or 2014?

The outlook for Voice over LTE (VoLTE) in the U.S. market is pretty dire, with sources saying it might be until late 2013 before Verizon lights up nationwide coverage. and 2014 for Sprint, says Doug Doug Mohney. 

That might matter if you believe VoLTE really will resonate with end users, allowing service providers to integrate other media with voice, or match features offered by over the top voice and messaging providers. 

But the potential advantage VoLTE represents is debated. VoLTE is supposed to allow mobile service providers to operate at lower cost, and add value. 

The issue is that, in most cases, lower price tends to beat "more features." No matter what people think "should" be the case, consumers and businesses shift to VoIP to save money, mostly, though the new features sometimes are a nice plus. 

If people are using over the top voice and messaging, it typically is because of the lower price. Matching those features, using VoLTE, probably won't resonate much if the carrier VoLTE prices are not close to those of OTT alternatives. 

Put Millennials First

Most elections, one supposes, are about perceived self interest. Candidates or parties are perceived, rightly or wrongly to “support my interests,” or “harm my interests.” But without overplaying the theme, the 2012 U.S. elections might unusually be less about “my interests,” and more about “my children’s interests, or my grandchildren’s interests.”

That might tend to explain why single (no children) voters might tend to lean one way, while parents might tend to lean a different way. I don’t mean that in a simple party affiliation sense, or a marital status sense, but in a time frame sense.

Parents, you might argue, naturally have a longer time frame than people without children. That isn’t to say parents necessarily agree about what should be done to ensure better life chances for their children and grandchildren, only to say that the behavioral time frame is different from that of any particular person without children. Those differences in perspective are not universal, nor exclusive, just arguably different in magnitude, by some significant amount.

Perhaps this is an election that is a bit unusual. Maybe some people will choose to act in ways that potentially harm their own interests, to protect the interests of their children. In other words, they will choose to put the interests of their Millennial children ahead of their own interests.

Some might say that is what they should do. Parents will get this. It's what they do, every day.

Generation Opportunity, which describes itself as “the largest non-profit, non-partisan organization in the United States engaging and mobilizing young Americans on the important economic issues facing the nation,” might be a case in point for parents and their grown children to be thinking in similar ways about the future.

The youth unemployment rate for 18 to 29 year olds specifically for September 2012 is 11.8  percent. The youth unemployment rate for 18 to 29 year old African-Americans for September 2012 is 21.0  percent. The youth unemployment rate for 18 to 29 year old Hispanics for September 2012 is 12.1  percent and the youth unemployment rate for 18 to 29 year old women for September 2012 is 11.6  percent.

The declining labor force participation rate has created an additional 1.7 million young adults that are not counted as “unemployed” by the U.S. Department of Labor because they are not in the labor force, meaning that those young people have given up looking for work due to the lack of jobs.

If the labor force participation rate were factored into the 18 to 29 youth unemployment calculation, the actual 18 to 29 unemployment rate would rise to 16.6  percent,
Generation Opportunity says.

Some “11.8  percent of young Americans are now unemployed through no fault of their own and more still are falling out of the workforce due to an historic lack of opportunity,” says  President Paul T. Conway, former Chief of Staff of the United States Department of Labor and former Chief of Staff of the United States Office of Personnel Management.

“Young Americans know this is not fair,” Conway simply notes.

For Generation Opportunity, the polling company WomanTrend conducted a nationwide online survey of 1,003 adults ages 18 to 29 between July 27 and July 31, 2012.

Some 29  percent of Millennials believe that the economic policies coming out of Washington are helping them, while 47  percent of Millennials say that the economic policies coming out of Washington are hurting them. The point here is that, perhaps unusually, a significant  percentage of parents might be thinking they need to act in ways that further their childrens’ interests, and their grandchildrens’ interests, not their own.

And that would mean the job market first and foremost. Some 89  percent of young people ages 18 to 29 say the current state of the economy is impacting their day-to-day lives.

Some 51 percent reduced their entertainment budget;

• 43 percent reduced their grocery/food budget;
• 43 percent cut back on gifts for friends and family;
• 40 percent skipped a vacation;
• 38 percent driven less;
• 36 percent taken active steps to reduce home energy costs;
• 32 percent tried to find an additional job;
• 27 percent sold personal items or property (cars, electronic appliances, or other possessions);
• 26 percent changed their living situation (moved in with family, taken extra roommates, downgraded apartment or home);
• 17 percent skipped a wedding, family reunion, or other significant social event;
• 1 percent other;
• 8 percent none of the above (accepted only this response);
• 3 percent do not know/cannot judge (accepted only this response)
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• Longer term decisions also are being affected, apparently. Some 84 percent of young people ages 18 to 29 had planned to but now might delay or not make at all a major life change or move forward on a major purchase due to the current state of the economy.
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• Those postponed actions include 38 percent who are delaying buying their own place, as well as:

• 32 percent go back to school/getting more education or training;
• 31 percent start a family;
• 27 percent change jobs/cities;
• 26 percent pay off student loans or other debt;
• 25 percent save for retirement;
• 23 percent get married;
• 12 percent none of the above (accepted only this response);
• 4 percent do not know/cannot judge

80,000 Koreans, Gangnam Style

Sorry, couldn't resist. There's no accounting for what goes viral. 

Can T-Mobile Climb to 3rd Spot on Strength of Prepaid?

The logic behind theT-Mobile USA  MetroPCS deal is that the combined firm will be able to climb the market share rankings on the strength of demand for prepaid services, sold without contract, on a "value" platform, with a skew towards younger users.

Historically, one might have viewed that strategy skeptically, given the lower average revenue per user prepaid accounts represent. That is one reason the market leaders have tried to avoid encouraging users to buy prepaid services, in place of postpaid. 

At the same time, T-Mobile USA has said it will emphasize the wholesale segment more heavily, something that is the mainstay for Clearwire and a significant business for Sprint. 

Of course, on one hand, you can argue the potential for prepaid in the United States is quite high, given prevailing adoption in many other countries, where prepaid is dominant. Some also argue that tough economic conditions will drive more people away from postpaid, and towards prepaid. 

UC Now is Mobile

It likely won't come as news to you, but unified communications increasingly, or perhaps even "mostly" now is about mobile computers, not phones, and wireless access, not fixed access, you might argue.

“Our unified communications survey reveals a really important shift taking place as enterprises increasingly use mobile devices to access UC applications,” notes Diane Myers, principal analyst for VoIP, UC, and IMS at Infonetics Research  .

“Survey respondents indicate that smart phones and tablets will be the two most widely used devices for UC in 2013, passing traditional computers and desk phones.”