What does enterprise IT look for when it buys handheld systems? That was the question we posed to our panel of leading IT decision makers.
Of the respondents to this MobileTrax survey, 40% were from companies with 20,000 or more employees, and 75% from companies with 1,000 or more employees. Similarly, 28% of the respondents worked for companies who had sales exceeding $10 billion, and 76% worked for companies with sales exceeding $100 million. Finally, 76.6% of the respondents said they worked in IT or MIS, and over 50% were at the Director or VP level in their organization.
We asked these leading IT execs to select the five attributes they consider most important when buying handheld systems. We found some very interesting results (Fig. 1). Because all respondents selected five criteria, it's important to look at the results from an overall ranking. It's not appropriate to judge one ranking next to another and draw any large conclusion from it.
Fig. 1: Ranking of handheld section factors by IT
Generally speaking, IT execs feel that price, battery life, synchronization, ease of use, size, and expandability make up the most important criteria they use when selecting handhelds for their organizations.
Price seems to be at the top of all lists as IT is always looking for a lower price. It's as if we have to get that selection criterion out of the way before we can see what the "real" issues are. Battery life is near the top because IT wants to make sure that if they deploy these systems, they are going to be able to work all day. Synchronization is high on the list because it's still so hard to manage it: Can you do it over the air? Do you have to sync to the PC? Can you sync to the server?
Please note that these results are averages. For some IT managers, integrated wireless will be rated number one if they are rolling out handhelds with wireless connectivity, even though the chart shows that wireless data is in the middle. Because wireless is so important, we asked them about their plans for wireless connectivity in their handhelds. Thirty-eight percent said they have already deployed wireless handhelds at least somewhere in their organization and another 45% said they plan to within the next 18 months (Fig. 2). Thus, we see that wireless is becoming a very important criterion for handhelds in future planning.
Timing for implenting wireless solutions by IT
It's interesting to note what's at the bottom of the criteria list and why. Color screens are ranked low not because they are unimportant but because it was felt that most systems already had it, and hence it was not necessary to give this factor a high rating. This is also true for touch-sensitive screens, as all handhelds have them. We're surprised, however, that "integrated voice" was ranked at the bottom. We suspect that as well-designed integrated devices such as the Treo 300 become more commonly used, we'll see the ranking of this at much higher levels in subsequent surveys.
From our experience doing these surveys over the past three years, we notice that as features become standard and, therefore, expected, respondents will drop the importance down in their selection process and focus on the things that are most important to them at that time. This is why color screens and touch-sensitive screens have dropped from the top to the bottom of the list.
Over the next two years, we expect to see integrated wireless data and voice ranked much higher in preference, while battery life and expansion drop as all systems finally provide good battery life and expandability. IT decision makers will not bother rating it high if they know they will have it in each system.
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