Information Governance: Concepts, Strategies, and Best Practices

CHAPTER 14

Information Governance for Mobile Devices^*

The use of mobile devices is ubiquitous in today's society. According to CTIA (the Wireless Association), over 326 million mobile devices were in use within the United States as of December 2012.¹ This is a more than 100 percent penetration rate, since many users have more than one mobile device, and usage continues to grow. Citizens of China, India, and the European Union (EU) have even greater mobile phone usage than those in the United States.

Mobile computing has vastly accelerated in popularity over the last decade. Several factors have contributed to this: Improved network coverage, physically smaller devices, improved processing power, better price points, a move to next-generation operating systems (OSs) such as Google's Android and Apple's iOS, and a more mobile workforce have fueled the proliferation of mobile devices.

Mobile devices include laptops, netbooks, tablet PCs, personal digital assistants (PDAs) such as BlackBerries, and smartphones such as Apple's iPhone and those based on Google's Android platform. What used to be simple cell phones are now small computers with nearly complete functionality and some unique communications capabilities. These devices all link to an entire spectrum of public and private networks.

Gartner has estimated that “by 2016, 40 percent of the global workforce will be mobile, with 67 percent of workers using smartphones”² (emphasis added).

With these new types of devices and operating ...