Tablets Used Widely for Business, Says Survey

Your employees' promises that they'll use a company-issued tablet for business purposes is probably on the up and up, according to the research firm Social Nuggets.

Business activity accounts for more than 25% of all activity on Apple iPads and BlackBerry PlayBooks, while it accounts for just under 20% of all activity on Android tablets, research by Social Nuggets shows. Games and shopping where also popular activities on tablets, as shopping accounted for 23% of the activity on Android tablets and games accounted for 17.5% of activity on iPads.

RELATED: Ready or not, iPad and other tablets are already in the enterprise

Social Nuggets has an interesting way of collecting its data on tablets: Essentially, it tries to measure the "buzz" being generated for tablets on popular websites and message boards by scanning both official reviews and comments in forums to see what people think of different tablets and what they use them for. So if a commenter on an Apple forum talks about using a particular productivity application or game, Social Nuggets will record that as a "conversation" about work or gaming on a particular tablet. The more conversations that are recorded for different types of apps, the more Social Nuggets counts as part of the overall buzz surrounding the device.

Social Nuggets culls data from a variety of forums and social media sites, including Twitter, Mac Rumors, Apple Insider, Android forums and Ars Technica. Twitter is by far the most-used site for tablet conversations, accounting for more than 42% of all tablet conversations recorded by Social Nuggets. Here are some other interesting tablet tidbits that Social Nuggets recorded in its latest batch of data:

- Unsurprisingly, Apple's iPad 2 is the most popular tablet in terms of both overall references on the Web and positive net sentiment. Trailing the iPad 2 are the Motorola Xoom, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, the original iPad and the BlackBerry PlayBook.

- Apple's Genius Bar has been a key to driving high customer service satisfaction for its iPad, Social Nuggets found. Customer service satisfaction for Android-based tablets trails Apple significantly.

- Just as Android and Apple dominate talk in the smartphone market, they also dominate talk in the tablet market. Social Nuggets says that Android accounted for nearly half the conversations it recorded, while Apple accounts for 40% of all conversations. RIM (7.6%), HP's webOS (2%) and Microsoft's Windows (less than 1%) all trail Apple and Android significantly in terms of overall buzz.

Read more about data center in Network World's Data Center section.

This story, "Tablets Used Widely for Business, Says Survey" was originally published by Network World.