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Businesses Now Driving "Bring Your Own Device" Trend
snydeq writes "Companies are no longer waiting for users to bring in their own smartphones and tablets into business environments, they're encouraging it, InfoWorld reports. 'Two of the most highly regulated industries — financial services and health care (including life sciences) — are most likely to support BYOD. So are professional services and consulting, which are "well" regulated. ... The reason is devilishly simple, Herrema says: These businesses are very much based on using information, both as the service itself and to facilitate the delivery of their products and services. Mobile devices make it easier to work with information during more hours and at more locations. That means employees are more productive, which helps the company's bottom line.' Even those companies who haven't yet embraced bring your own device policies yet already have one in place, but don't know it, according to recent surveys."
If the business has a clear policy of not providing tools, such as a lot of auto repair shops, then US income tax deductions are possible. Just barely possible but there can be complications.
In the usual commercial business world if you want to buy an iPhone for use at work there is no way it is going to be tax deductible unless you get the company to give you a letter stating it is a requirement of your job to buy the iPhone and that it will be used only for business purposes.
Absolutely the reason this is popular is cost shifting. You have 50 employees that you want to have iPhones... so the company can spend $25,000 or nothing. Gosh, who would have thought of that?
Now, if everyone buys iPhones there is very little problem with IT support. If 30 people buy iPhones, 10 people buy Android phones and the remaining buy a mix of Windows phones, Open Moko phones and something new that came out last week the IT job will be a nightmare. Same kind of problem happens where everyone buys a different tablet device brings them all to a meeting and someone has instructions for using some iPad-only app for displaying something important. Guess what? The help desk may not be able to resolve this to everyone's satisfaction.
This sounds like a lot of short-term thinking that saves some direct money immediately with a lot of long-term consequences and long-term expense. Mostly, it is really dumb move.