Most Brazilian professionals are using their personal smartphones for work purposes and are paying for the related costs themselves, according to research on the evolution on smartphone use during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The study carried out by not-for-profit global trade body the Mobile Ecosystem Forum (MEF) has found that 66% of Brazilian professionals are using their own devices for work. This represents a rise of 5 percentage points in relation to the previous edition of the study published at the end of 2019.
Of the professionals using their personal devices in a professional setting, 75% are not being subsidized by their employers, the research has found. This is an increase of one percentage point in relation to the previous edition of the survey.
Some 14% of those polled by the MEF claimed to use a corporate device, while 11% use their own phone but have their costs covered by their employer.
In relation to the types of information shared between work colleagues through smartphones, the Brazilian professionals participating in the study cited pictures (60%), private messages (51%) and contacts (47%), followed by corporate information (47%) and documents (43%).
Some 44% of the companies polled requested staff to secure working from home communications whilst working remotely, while 28% did not hear anything on the subject from their employers and 28% do not work from home. Top employer requests relate to WiFi routers (34%), Virtual Private Networks (28%), new mobile apps (26%), firewall/antivirus (26%) and cloud storage (25%).
Reactive measures to address data security issues are not uncommon, according to the study: some 26% of the Brazilian professionals polled have been asked to remove an ex-colleague from a chat, while 16% have been asked to delete all work-related info from their smartphone and 15% have been asked to delete certain contacts on their device. Some 43% said their employer has asked them to take one or more of these actions.
The seventh edition of the MEF research was carried out in January 2021, by On Device Research. It has surveyed 6,500 smartphone users in 10 markets including Brazil, with 650 users polled in each country.
