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Are Mobile Devices Suited For Exploration?

This week CIOs and senior IT managers are heading off to the Gartner Wireless & Mobile Summit to learn if their businesses can afford to pony up for a new mobile deployment.

Before the summit, Gartner analysts Dale Kutnick and Ken Dulaney sat down to discuss some of the themes they will address at this year's event. During their discussion, Dulaney argued that mobile devices aren't yet ready for exploration, i.e. the kind of tasks where an employee goes out to actively search and learn something new. Dulaney argued that desktop Web browsers are perfect for exploration, but due to their small screen sizes and limted form factors, cell phones and smartphones were only good for serial tasks, such as sending and receiving e-mails and text messages and following small data alerts.

I'm not so sure I agree with Dulaney. I think the time is fast-approaching when smartphones will enable mobile workers to complete both serial and exploratory tasks from the field. Even now, I can use a Treo pretty effectively to perform some simple search tasks, edit any number of documents, and even browse the Web for fun. Mobile browsers have come a long way in the last three years, especially on smartphones like the Treo or some Symbian and Windows devices.

Surfing on non-smartphone handsets is still a chore, but it's getting better. Even new handsets without touchscreens, like the Motorola Q, are remarkably easier to surf with than their non-touch screen predecessors of a year ago.

What do you think? Is Dulaney right? Are smartphones and cell phones only good for e-mail? Or do your employees successfully use their mobile devices to perform more complex tasks?

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