A daily digest of IT news, curated from blogs, forums and news sites around the web each morning. We highlight the key commentary and demystify the real story.
In Wednesday's IT Blogwatch, Richi Jennings watches iPhone use in businessdoes really it take a back seat to personal use? Not to mention Sting's home improvement tips...
Jenna Wortham says that iPhone owners don't use them for work:
Do you treat your iPhone as a guilty pleasure? Youre not alone. A new report from Compete ... found that 73 percent of iPhone owners used their mobile devices primarily for personal reasons, such as entertainment. By comparison, 59 percent of owners with other types of smartphones... primarily used their devices for business and work-related needs.
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The mobile platform market is rapidly changing as other companies such as Google, Research in Motion, Microsoft and Nokia start stores to sell third-party mobile applications. But [Compete] said they still have some catching up to do in terms of application popularity.
The anonymous Elecronista gnomes add:
To the researchers, the bias is more to do with an emphasis on non-traditional apps than the suitability of the phone to its particular task, as the iPhone is more likely to have software that caters to more than just calendars and e-mail.
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Having a large collection makes the device "sticky" and means iPhones are more likely to be kept the entire day, the analyst says, where traditional business phones are more likely to be used only some of the day ... iPhones in particular have become a regular home for GPS-aware apps outside of pure navigation.
But Robin Wauters says, "Yeah, right":
The NY Times reporter didnt detail where these stats are coming from and how Compete reached their conclusions exactly apart from saying smartphone users were surveyed, but I consider the articles headline ... to be quite misleading either way you spin it. If you have a Web-capable phone, you are going to use it for both work and play.
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What isnt detailed is how much time in total they are using their phones - which I imagine is a whole lot more than on other smartphones - and how much more efficient it makes them when they actually do use it for work ... Id also argue that the time I spend using my iPhone for professional reasons may be much less than I used to spend battling the Windows Mobile OS on my previous smartphone (an HTC), but that it increased my productivity when Im on the go five-fold easily, and isnt that what really matters?
Barry Schwartz, too:
I find that incredibly high, but what do I know ... 90% of my usage would be classified as work related.
Bob Warfield cries, "Balooney!":[sic]
Nothing could be more silly, as anyone that owns an iPhone will happily tell you. The root of the problem is a simple one: if you own one of the other SmartPhones, it isnt good for anything but work. In fact, it isnt even that good for work. Its good for email and thats about it.
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Do I use my iPhone for work? Absolutely! I use it more than I ever did the gaggle of Blackberries and Treos that sit in a drawer at home unused. To say otherwise is just Compete busy linkbaiting to get ink for their service.
Meanwhile, Seth Weintraub ponders an iPhone Lite, on Verizon:
Report after report has come out over the past few days linking Verizon to Apple's iconic iPhone. It also so happens that AT&T, the sole carrier in the US, is currently trying to negotiate an exclusivity contract into 2011 with Apple.
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All of this may be a game Apple is playing with AT&T to try to squeeze a bigger subsidy out of them for the iPhone in 2011. Somehow I doubt it, especially if Apple is showing off CDMA prototypes to Verizon..
But Stacey Higginbotham doesn't believe a word of it:
As a Verizon subscriber, I wish I could believe this story, but we have several reasons to think its just a negotiating ploy aimed at getting more concessions from AT&T as it tries to hold onto its iPhone exclusive.
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If Apple wants to launch an iPhone with Verizon, it would rather do so with an LTE phone than a CDMA version ... But Verizons LTE network wont be ready by summertime ... [and] its hard to believe that Apple has found a loophole in its deal with AT&T thats big enough to slip an iPhone-lite device through.
Richi Jennings is an independent analyst/adviser/consultant, specializing in blogging, email, and spam. A 24 year, cross-functional IT veteran, he is also an analyst at Ferris Research. You can follow him on Twitter, pretend to be Richi's friend on Facebook, or just use boring old email: blogwatch@richi.co.uk.
