Small, light tablet PCs are the new in-demand productivity tool, with South African businesses increasingly issuing their employees and management with these devices.
Research firm Gartner believes tablet PCs are set to outsell desktops, and will account for 20.4 million unit sales, by 2015.
Hannes Fourie, IDC senior research analyst, systems and infrastructure solutions, notes that in the wake of tablet PCs, organisations will be left with no option but to provide more choices to their employees.
“Students are adopting media tablets as their primary devices and these students will become our next employees,” he says.
According to Fourie, mobility is probably the biggest advantage of media tablets. However, he notes the biggest disadvantage is the lack of a keyboard. To sum this up, he explains, media tablets are media consumers and laptops are media, file as well as document creators.
Growing appetite
Graeme Victor, CEO of telecommunications solutions company Du Pont Telecom, says over the past few months, local telcos have experienced a sharp increase in requests by businesses for fleets of tablet PCs for their sales teams and executives.
In June, Gijima promised that all 3 700 of its employees would receive iPad 2s for the next six months, through an agreement with Apple distributor, Core.
Victor believes the rapid uptake of smartphones, such as the iPhone and BlackBerry, whetted business appetite for anywhere, anytime business connectivity.
“Smartphones gave businesspeople a taste for the greater efficiency and more effective use of time that was possible with a mobile computing device,” he says.
“But smartphones have their limitations. They have been designed as business communications devices, as opposed to business work tools. You can't, for example, work on a Word document or Excel Spreadsheet on your smartphone. Well, you can - but would you?” he probes.
On the other hand, Fourie points out that although employees will become more mobile by using media tablets, it will certainly add another layer of complexity to the IT infrastructure.
More devices will result in more operating systems, more platforms, more complex vendor support structure, leading to more vulnerability, he says.
“We see media tablets as a complementary device to standard notebooks. It will not replace notebooks. Adoption of media tablets will also spur growth in other markets, like monitors, docking stations and keyboards,” Fourie states.
Ultimate business tool
Victor says while tablets are not new, early tablets never really caught on as they tended to be regarded as executive toys. However, he adds, recognition of tablets as excellent productivity tools - at times better than laptops or notebooks - is changing early perceptions.
When integrated with the user's cellphone, or when WiFi- and 3G-enabled, tablets become the ultimate mobile business tool. Users can have 24/7, anywhere access to all their office, server, desktop, and business information at their fingertips, he notes.
“However, because mobile data costs in SA remain extremely high, the business' mobility costs can soar out of control - unless it is effectively managed,” Victor warns.
Compared to a laptop, Victor elaborates, a tablet is more portable; it generally has a longer battery life; and users can turn it on, connect to the Internet, switch on an app and get to work faster.
While most businesspeople use their tablets only to browse the Internet, check e-mails and work on basic word processing and spreadsheet documents away from the office, the devices are increasingly being used for sales support and customer presentations and as a voice recorder and note-taking device, says Victor.
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