An interesting and fairly credible statistic (it was good enough for The Telegraph) is that 1.44 million Kindles were sold in the UK alone at Christmas 2011. That’s about one in 40 of the adult population. It is probably too early for the sales figures from last Christmas, but between existing Kindle users, the two new models, other e-reader brands and another Christmas, a fair guess would be that three, four or five out of 20 adults currently own some form of e-reader. In general the Irish public appetite for electronic devices is on a par with or ahead of our neighbours on the inner island, so we should be broadly similar. On the other hand, Amazon’s odd policy of treating Ireland as a separate ‘international’ market served from the USA (copyright issues, not very apparently) may have served as a limiting factor.
Two very interesting aspects of those 2011 figures were that six out of 10 of the recipients were women and that people over 55 were twice as likely to have received one as the 18-24 age group. It is not possible to read too much into these breakdowns on a valid statistical basis. But it does firmly suggest, in this column’s opinion (always humble, of course) that some still prevailing myths about ICT and older people or women or other non-youth, non-geek markets are just wrong. When the use and purpose of an electronic device is something more serious than games or social media, sensible adults make the effort to come to grips with it.
The fear factor is often still there, of course-only small children learn new things fearlessly. But given a tangible objective, like controlling the finances of a micro-business or keeping in touch with the grandchildren in Australia, it is not remotely amazing that older people learn and adapt perfectly well. That women are so often better at this because they are more flexible in attitude, will hardly surprise anyone either. In that context, the merits of an e-reader as a flexible, lightweight and type size adjustable alternative to 0.5kg airport paperbacks are self-evident. So much so that is now indispensable to adult readers who travel-especially the fare payers. A book to read is as indispensable to many adults as a game for children or earphone sounds for tweenies of all ages.
Kindles and e-readers are a particularly good example of device adoption because they are essentially single purpose. Yes, some of them have now added colour screens and web capability, but the essence is still delightfully pure: they offer electronic paper and an ultra-portable personal library for readers of books.
But an e-reader has almost no business purpose outside of the publishing trade, which is what makes it a valuable category to offer insights to CIOs and managements currently under intense BYOD pressure. The first one is simple as the e-paper screen: when a device of any kind is especially fit for its purpose the wisdom of crowds is as accurate as all hindsight-20/20 plus. And they vote with their wallets.
Once upon a time, in the dim and distant past of 2011, this column suggested mischievously that corporate users should be issued with appropriate devices, trained how to use them well, and securely, and then supervised with a disciplinary whip (or whatever HR best practice substitutes these days). BYOD has come a fair way since then, while it has to be acknowledged that the tablet format has brought hand-held convenience to the business world. Tablets are sufficiently powerful and controllable in terms of their operating systems and on-device storage to satisfy most of the needs of work on the move. Sheer connectivity, of course, is the general market driver. When combined with 4G, at least in major urban areas, a tablet of the current generation-much less the inevitable improved models-seems an almost ideal personal business device. As with all portable devices, the quality and size of the screen of choice for the task in hand is always paramount. That is the user point of view. After that, the corporate concerns take over and today’s tablets have at least the capability of delivering managed and secure data services to the remote users.
Smart phones were and are the distraction. They are multi-purpose devices in a market that is in constant motion and largely driven by consumer demands. It is almost possible to forget that they can deliver quite effective voice telephony, arguably still as relevant to Irish daily business as any of the smarter technology. But most CIOs as well as the vendors of enterprise applications have been caught in the headlights. The sheer multiplicity of smart phones, manufacturers and carriers, OS versions and their functionality changing daily, and apps spawning in confetti confusion has been and still is beyond intimidating as a challenge.
That is unless, of course, you choose the bullet to bite. A very few organisations have chosen a device model for staff, organised the security and data management and simply issued them-‘That’s your company phone, treat carefully and don’t phone America.’ Quite old-fashioned, really, but it can work and lots of people carry two phones anyway. As an approach, it is essentially the same as the company laptop. Want a newer model with a big screen and surround sound? BIYB (Buy It Yourself, Baby!). The point is, of course, that if devices are chosen, configured and issued by management they can be locked down or at least controlled more effectively than any mixed device population.
This column sometimes believes the melancholy conclusion is that uncontrolled BYOD has been driven at least in part by corporate economies. ‘Why should we have to buy everyone a laptop every three years when they’ll buy their own if we offer them a modest few quid subsidy?’ Yeah, right. Have any of those bean counters done a cost/benefit analysis of the ongoing costs of managing the security of multiple device types, much less the support issues and constraints on enterprise application investment or development?
Yes, of course practical CIOs have found ways around the challenges of a heterogeneous mobile environment (could we call that HME?) and the most successful involve some variation of the ‘virtual desktop’ or logically and securely separated OS zones or even dual SIM cards. The ‘dual personality’ strategy can certainly work and avoid unintended social texts (or even MMS) to customer CEOs. But once we’re into separation by purpose the faintly old-fashioned ‘my phone / work phone’ solution becomes quietly attractive again. For many workers the work device can be switched off or left behind after hours. Who ever took a laptop to the cinema or the night club? Were they any less competitively efficient in the context of their peers and colleagues? Yes, we live in a globally connected 24×365 world today. Yawn. The power of the off switch deserves re-discovery.
A separate dedicated, device solves many issues of policy and usage rules such as call costs, for example, or the right of management to wipe data remotely with no palaver if any risk issue arises, which brings us back to tablets. Their function set is fairly clearly as a laptop/PC substitute with connectivity and enough compute capability to run business applications if necessary. You could imagine playing with some analytics graphics, for example, or even a spreadsheet without too many vertical columns. Sure the users could have a go at YouTube or TV on the move but a 7" screen is not conducive to extended use even if the employer had any reason to care.
The real point of all of this is that we are still at a very early and immature stage in relation to personal devices, and indeed personal use of applications/apps. Suppose a cheeky new employee said ‘I have no interest in BYOD. You hardly expect me to bring my own desk and chair, so just issue me with whatever you think suitable for the work I am to do.’ It would certainly cut past any Apple, Android, Linux or Windows debate.
There is a topical comparison with Google’s Panda and its younger Penguin sibling. Improving the quality of its search by ranking web sites in a deeper and more sophisticated way continues to cause rumblings and grumblings in sections of the web industries, notably the ‘search optimisation’ outfits. These quacks have been making money from applications of the obvious (or, in fairness, a few proven trade tricks) and are now hopping mad because the pony has to learn new tricks or retire. The rest of us, on the other hand, should be celebrating the fact that simple and simple-minded quasi-statistical criteria like ‘hits’ and ‘page impressions’ and ‘unique visitors’ are finally being superseded as we move on to Web Primer Book 2.
The advertising industry used to rely on ‘cost per 1,000 readers/viewers’ as a crude basic measure. But of course value judgements and ABC1 punter spending power came rapidly into the equation. All of which mass-market analysis (and poor science) is then meaningless for small and niche markets-pigeon fanciers, Esperanto speakers, philatelists, ski jumpers, etc. You get the idea. Funnily enough, the most global medium ever is perfect for all of those minorities. On the Web, they can find their interests with a few clicks. Self-service, no search optimisation required.
Distributed corporate computing, a.k.a. mobile working, is at a similar early and ever so slightly naïve stage of development. We used to look out from inside the firewall and worry about the dangerous jungle out there. Now that we’ve grown up and escaped into that open and exciting environment and found that it is not so personally threatening at all if you stay out of the shady bits, it is the senior and notionally wiser guys back in the senior C-suite that have to do the worrying. They have no control over and little visibility of where we wander and even less of the carriers and service providers, especially the cloudy ones. Personal devices and choices? Shudders of fear, uncertainty and doubt-combined with galloping indecision.
This column has rattled on in the past about ‘screen of choice’ as the key factor in device decisions. From a corporate point of view, what the Wise Ones want to ensure is the screen content of their choice-online anytime, anywhere, etc. One way to do that is to supply the damned dedicated hardware, say a tablet, and have done with it-at least for a couple of years. All of the other solutions are going to be soft and logical, and therefore vulnerable.
What to choose? How to choose? Who to trust?
Welcome to the adult world, corporate computing.
Ltd
