Survey Says Mobile Professionals Like Treo's

Posted By: Ryan Wednesday, February 15, 2006 12:54:44 PM

Palm and Frost & Sullivan today released the results of a smartphone end-user survey declaring that the Palm Treo smartphone is the smartphone of choice for businesses. According to the report, mobile professionals are choosing Treo smartphones for the platform's abundant business-ready applications, high degree of flexibility, choice of operating systems, and power and convenience.

In addition, Frost & Sullivan assessed the return on investment (ROI) of Treo smartphones used in a range of businesses and conservatively determined the average payback period to be less than two months. The results also reported that sales and field agents experienced productivity gains that equaled $11,125 in average savings per agent each year. The report can be found here.

Frost & Sullivan surveyed 531 U.S. enterprise employees holding either line-of-business or IT positions. The survey indicated that, when given a choice, more enterprise employees would opt for a Treo smartphone than for any other competing product.

"Palm is strongly positioned to be the smartphone brand name of choice for enterprise markets for a number of reasons," said Dan Colquhoun, vice president at Frost & Sullivan. "Treo smartphone users reported significant productivity improvements; workflow efficiency gains; the ability to respond more quickly to critical, time-sensitive communications; and reduced expenditures on other hardware."

Participants cited the following reasons for choosing Palm Treo smartphones:

Business-ready Applications -- At present, there are thousands of software applications for Treo smartphones available from third-party partners, including titles for finance, insurance, real estate, healthcare, education, sales force automation and IT management.
Flexibility -- Treo smartphones can connect to most back-end email server systems and infrastructures, and provide flexibility in the operating systems supported. For servers, there are solutions for all versions of Microsoft Exchange/Outlook, Lotus Domino/Notes and for Group Wise. Palm has also announced a client for the BlackBerry Enterprise Server via BlackBerry Connect(TM).
Choice of OS -- With a choice of open, business-ready operating systems, technical and business decision makers are able to agree that simplicity, security and user satisfaction are most important in mobilizing an enterprise. Both Palm OS and Windows Mobile platforms work seamlessly with existing email, enterprise applications and IT infrastructure.
Power and Convenience -- Treo smartphones allow users to make calls, handle email, send messages and turn "downtime into found time" while waiting at the airport, sitting in the back of a taxi or even just waiting for meetings to begin.

"We wanted to provide our field sales and service force with a seamless way to stay connected to the people and information they need to do their jobs even better," said David Fairbanks, chief information officer, Silicon Graphics (SGI). "By giving them a phone and access to email and schedules using GoodLink all in one device, the Treo smartphone has fundamentally improved the way they work."

Currently, 40 percent of the Fortune 1000 companies use Treo smartphones, and an additional 35 percent are in testing or trials. Palm's flexible, standards-based approach and customer-centric model represent its commitment to serving the growing mobile needs of small, large and global businesses.

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Who paid for the 'survey' and...

SeldomVisitor @ 2/15/2006 4:48:57 PM #

...what did the results exclude?

Inquiring minds wanna know!

Giggle.

RE: Who paid for the 'survey' and...

hoodoo @ 2/15/2006 5:09:03 PM #

"A sample size of 531 provides a margin of error of ±4.3%, 19
times out of 20. Of the total sample, 208 are IT professionals
and 323 line of business managers and executives.
The study included 167 Palm Treo smartphone users, 250
Blackberry users and 114 users of other brands of smartphones."

http://palmone.r3h.net/us/pdfs/whitepaper_frostsullivantreo.pdf

RE: Who paid for the 'survey' and...

Tuckermaclain @ 2/15/2006 7:46:46 PM #

Funny, nobody mentions instability. Is it because of low expectations after using Windows for years, or is is due to no 3rd party apps? A few years ago somebody here referenced a study that showed the vast majority (70%) of Palm users only used the basic apps. I'm sure stability would be much better. Anyway, great news that the business world likes the Treo. They are much less critical than the PIC readers. Still waiting and hoping for an awesome HollyWood this Summer.

RE: Who paid for the 'survey' and...

freakout @ 2/15/2006 8:23:37 PM #

"Funny, nobody mentions instability...They are much less critical than the PIC readers"

Yep.

"Still waiting and hoping for an awesome HollyWood this Summer"

You and me both...

Tim Carroll
Your friendly customer service robot
(and big Treo fan)

RE: Who paid for the 'survey' and...

mtt @ 2/15/2006 8:56:53 PM #

I would say it is because of very few 3rd party apps. I have a few friends who have them, some that I sold on them. None of them complain about crashes, and most of them haven't installed anything beyond ROM, or maybe what was on the CD. I get resets all the time, when receiving SMS and sometimes calls. (Of course I don't tell them that, I'm just happy theirs work, or else they would be wanting me to help them fix them.)

Handspring Visor, Palm V, Treo 180, Treo 90, Treo 600, Treo 650...
MTT

RE: Who paid for the 'survey' and...

AJG @ 2/15/2006 9:57:30 PM #

I recall, but I don't recall from where (haha), that another study was done regarding people who had smartphones. Many of them (60-70%) didn't add 3rd party apps to their smartphones. I for one do, although I use Series 60, but apparently many people don't. It didn't say, however, why people didn't add third party apps so it could have been a whole lot of garbage.

-AJ

RE: Who paid for the 'survey' and...

freakout @ 2/15/2006 10:58:54 PM #

"I get resets all the time, when receiving SMS and sometimes calls."

Really? Odd. What do you think would be causing it?

Tim Carroll
Your friendly customer service robot
(and big Treo fan)

RE: Who paid for the 'survey' and...

ginsberg @ 2/15/2006 11:56:36 PM #

Productivity gains of $11,125 per year -- compared to what?

No phone at all?
Paper and pencils?

RE: Who paid for the 'survey' and...

SeldomVisitor @ 2/16/2006 5:59:34 AM #

I like the last $5 - damn! They're good! Wonder if anyone ever studied numerical analysis and "significant digits"...oh! Wait! This is MARKETING! In that case, I wonder if anyone ever read "How to Lie with Statistics"?....giggle.

-----

In other news (or...er...blog...):

-- http://gigaom.com/2006/02/16/revenge-of-windows-mobile/

RE: Who paid for the 'survey' and...

mtt @ 2/16/2006 9:14:59 AM #

@freakout (Tim Carrol)

I don't know. They have gotten a lot worse in the past few weeks, to where I removed Verichat and a network/sms helper app that I can't recall the name of to try to eliminate the problem. This made is better, but it still has a nasty habit of reseting when it wakes up to recieve a SMS, especially if I immediatly push the unlock button.

In the past I have posted on TreoCentral, and worked some things out, but I have been too busy lately to try and figure it out. I'm just glad it resets quickly.

Handspring Visor, Palm V, Treo 180, Treo 90, Treo 600, Treo 650...
MTT