How size matters for mobile computers

As we noted previously, netbooks and other ultra portable devices, such as mobile Internet devices (MIDs), are gaining a lot of traction as firms look to mobilise their operations as a repsonse to  increased  financial pressures.

Reinforcing the point that ultra portables are gaining popularity if not yet credibility from businesses, a survey by ABI Research of more than 1000 mobile computing users aimed at identifying attitudes to netbooks and Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs) has revealed that netbooks are regarded as secondary mobile computing platforms  and MIDs as essentially mobile phone replacements.

Just 11% of mobile computing users in the US would use a netbook as their primary computer, whilst 79% view such devices as a secondary device to be used in addition to a laptop or desktop computer. For MIDs, almost half of the survey regarded them as mobile phone replacements even though 34% said they would continue to use a mobile handset even if they had a MID.

Yet the research also found compelling evidence that people will value a separate device with a bigger screen that can access web and office applications and that can carried almost any where easily.

So firms need to ask, just what exactly do you want their mobile workers to be able to do? Word and Excel are the baselines and perhaps some database/CRM/sales applications. Won't a netbook be able to support these adequately and more over flexible?

And do firms really need to equip workers with expensive laptops boasting large power draining screens that are designed to run multimedia applications that they never need for business purposes?