NZ Businesses Reflect Phone Email Trend Found in USA

The results of a US Nielsen survey of mobile web users, appears to reflect trends in New Zealand according to the habits of a number of business men and women in Christchurch.

The survey revealed the majority of consumers now read email on their mobile phones. Neilsen says,

“The way U.S. consumers spend their Internet time on their mobile phones paints a slightly different picture to that of Internet use from computers. There has been a significant rise (28%) in the prevalence of social networking behaviour, but the dominance of email activity on mobile devices has continued with an increase from 37.4% to 41.6% of U.S. mobile Internet time.”

http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/what-americans-do-online-social-media-and-games-dominate-activity/

Christchurch HR and IT businesswoman Leanne Crozier from Decipher Group, says that without her phone, she would be very limited in what she could achieve in her work.

“I am often on the go all day so I don’t get much opportunity to sit with my laptop during the day. I couldn’t manage my work or my life without my Blackberry,” she says.

Leanne sees positives and negatives in this technology trend.

“We are all about adding value to clients and as part of that being able to get back to them where timeliness is essential, it gives us a competitive edge,” she says. Leanne also adds that there’s an expectation of immediacy these days when it comes to communication in some cases, some people may feel under increasing pressure to respond immediately when sometimes, that’s not the case,” she says. “It’s all about prioritising using good time management and knowing your clients well”, she says.

Business advisor and Chartered Accountant, Craig McCoy a director with Smith McCoy Alford in Christchurch has only recently bought an IPhone. He says before he would not really have been concerned about not being able to access emails from his phone, now...

“Having experienced the ability to check emails and respond then and there if appropriate, I am totally on board with it. I don’t have to go through dozens of emails when I get back to the office, which can often take half an hour or more, before I am out again for a meeting,” he says.

Designers Lisa and John Plato of Plato Design also in Christchurch, are often with clients out of the office and to be able to liaise with their designers and admin staff back at the office is absolutely essential to working efficiently and to deadlines.

“We have had email capable phones for quite some time now so we cannot imagine working without them,” says John. “I use my phone more than my computer for emailing as I am out and about a lot but I also use it for emails when I am back in the office – habit I guess.”

All of the businesswomen and men interviewed here agreed that accessing emails using phones will become the norm in the very near future with the majority of consumers using multifunctional devices .They believe the multifunctional aspect will have many new elements added to it and it will continue to grow in the number of functions such a device can perform.