U.S. Labor Day Survey from Rebtel Shows Men are Twice as Likely to Use a Mobile Device Exclusively for Work, and Women are More Likely to Own a Multinational Business

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“Our first major communications report on how American workers use their mobile devices provides an interesting look at differences between men and women and the methods used by an increasingly mobile workforce,” said Andreas Bernstrom, CEO of Rebtel.

San Francisco, USA & Stockholm, Sweden (PRWEB) August 30, 2012

Rebtel today announced its first U.S. Labor Day survey, which polled U.S adults on communication trends and preferences when it comes to use of devices, services and platforms for work. The data was compiled from a survey taken on August 21 – August 23 across 753 Rebtel user respondents.

According to the study, 14.1% or approximately 1 in 7 U.S. adults (ages 17 and older) own their own business, and of those that do 38.2% are multinational companies. Men were more likely to own their own business than females (17.3% vs. 10.2%), but women were more likely to indicate they own a multinational business (42.4% vs. 37.8%)

iPhone, iPad Reign Supreme Among Workers, As Multiple Mobile Device Use Becomes Mainstream

Among those polled, 78% own between 1-2 mobile devices (including tablets, smartphones and feature phone), and 21.9% (or approx. 1-5 adults) own 3 devices or more.

Owning a separate device for work appears to be more and more common, as 1 in 4 respondents (25.3%) claim to have a mobile device that they use exclusively for that purpose, but men were almost twice as likely as women to indicate this (32.0% vs. 17.4%)

Of those that claim to own a device for work, iPhone was most popular, capturing 33.0% of respondents, followed by Android at 27.0%, iPad at 23.8% and BlackBerry at 16.8%. Android Tablets meanwhile have a long way to go to appeal to American workers as only 6.5% of respondents claim to use them exclusively for work.

Among smartphone owners, women were more likely to indicate owning an iPhone than men (36.2% vs. 32.6%), whereas men were much more likely to indicate owning an Android (33.8% vs. 26.6%). And of those who use a mobile device exclusively for work, women were 20% more likely to use an iPhone than men (36.8% vs. 30.6%), where men were approximately 50% more likely to use an Android (30.6% vs. 19.3%).

The largest surprise between genders who use a mobile device exclusively for work occurred with Blackberry, where women reported being twice as likely as men to use it for that purpose (26.3% vs. 12.1%).

Other highlights from Rebtel’s Labor Day communications survey include:

•     Nearly 3 in 10 (28%) of adults use a third-party messaging app or service for work that is not provided from their existing carrier.
•     Of the third-party messaging apps used for work, VoIP apps (e.g. Skype) were most common, totaling more than 70% of respondents (71.7%), while social networking apps like Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter were second with usage among 56.6% of adult workers. Surprisingly, Instant Messenger was fourth at 42.4%, with group messaging apps like Kik and WhatsApp, trailing at 34.1%.
•     Among social networking apps used for work, Facebook is not surprisingly most preferred with 75.5% of respondents, followed by Twitter (21.1%) and Instagram (12.3%). 20.1% claim to not use social networking sites for work at all.
•     Despite new technologies, Voice is still a major part of work communications, with 51.4% using voice at least an hour a day, with 36.5% using voice between 2-5 hours each day.
•     The amount of those who use voice for work appears to be increasing with 45.8% saying they use Voice about the same as last year, with 41.4% saying they plan to use Voice more than last year.
•     In terms of communications preference if respondents could only choose one method, Voice is vastly more popular than runner-up email (53.1% vs. 33.7% respectively), followed by Instant Messaging (10.8%), with social networks lagging far behind at (2.5%).

“Our first major communications report on how American workers use their mobile devices for work provides an interesting look at differences between men and women and the methods used by an increasingly mobile workforce,” said Andreas Bernstrom, CEO of Rebtel.

Rebtel’s Labor Day Communications survey was conducted using SurveyMonkey, an online survey service, which polled 753 U.S. mobile users.

For more information on Rebtel’s services, please visit: http://www.rebtel.com. To learn more about Rebtel’s recent research surveys, contact: eric(at)vscpr(dot)com

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About Rebtel                                                                
Rebtel is the world’s largest mobile VoIP company after Skype. Today, Rebtel is growing rapidly with more than 17 million users with a run rate of over 1 billion minutes per year. The company is on pace to hit $85 million in revenue at the end of 2012. Rebtel users call through smartphone or desktop applications or any other phone to make free or cheap international calls. For more information, or to start using Rebtel, go to http://www.rebtel.com.

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