BYOD hitting employees in the pocket

Analyst research reveals just 23 per cent of staff are reimbursed for using their own devices

A large number of enterprises are failing to put in place a coherent BYOD strategy, leaving many employees out of pocket as they use their own devices for work purposes.

According to figures from analyst Analysys Mason Research, 52 per cent of people questioned use their personal mobile phone for work – but when asked what for, 59 per cent was for incoming and outgoing calls, and a further 21 per cent for SMS purposes – neither of which requires access to the corporate network.

Other results saw email account for 14 per cent of BYOD activity and accessing business applications four per cent. "Other uses" accounted for two per cent, which the analyst surmised would include accessing documents or a calendar, or using instant messaging.

And despite the increased use of personal devices for work purposes, only 23 per cent of respondents to the Connected Consumer Survey who used their own device for work were reimbursed for their expense.

The analyst revealed that SMBs are increasingly adopting mobile device management (MDM) to cover all these issues, and it predicted that cloud-based MDM revenue globally will increase from $574.8m (£374m) in 2013 to $1.5bn in 2018 – a CAGR of 27.3 per cent.

Patrick Rusby, research analyst at Analysys Mason, said: “Enterprises need to be ready to manage and support a large range of devices, and to enable employees to access the applications that they require in order to be productive. MDM provides one element of this, but it is increasingly important to have application and content management alongside this.”