As organizations start to take the first steps in providing their employees with tablets for commercial applications and use, a key decision point becomes “what is the optimal screen size?” With three categories of screen size (7”, 10-11”, and 13”) now common in the market, there are options. And the choices all have different benefits and tend to lend themselves to certain usage patterns or types of applications. Combining the user type, the applications, usage patterns, and technical features is essential to making good decisions.
Before we get too far into this discussion, it’s important to understand that in nearly every case, standardizing on a single form factor will probably not be the right way to go. It may be possible to standardize on one size during the first roll-outs, but once tablet use is wide-spread, it’s very important that size options are presented to the end user community. Trying to shoehorn all users into a single form factor will provide short-term savings in support and acquisition, but it will breed long-term discontent.
For commercial use, there are some key aspects of the size decision that need to be considered that are different from the consumer approach. This is primarily due to the applications that are going to be used. Read more
There are so many similarities between the early days of the PC (1978-1982) and this era in the nascent market for tablets. In both cases, the vast majority of purchases in these early days were made by consumers, even if the device was being brought into work. After all, there were no budgets for these new devices, and IT didn’t have any way to manage or deal with them. However, once they started showing up in larger numbers, this approach was no longer valid, and organizations moved to buy and manage them.
There’s no need to wonder what to do about the proliferation of mobile devices and employees’ demonstrated desire to use those devices at work. So says Gartner in its latest report, based on a survey of IT professionals in large enterprises across the US, EMEA and Asia.
When modern workers move from smartphone to desk phone to IM to email to conferencing—and from desktop to laptop to tablet and back to smartphone again—the conversation can get a bit muddled. But since each medium offers unique capabilities and strengths, none is likely to disappear in the short term. And the BYOD trend—whether contained, discouraged, or cultivated in your organization—surely adds more complexity. 
