Survey Shows U.S. Businesses Prefer Treo Smartphones

According to a recent survey conducted by Frost & Sullivan, Palm's Treo line are the smartphones of choice for U.S. businesses.

The company surveyed 531 U.S. enterprise employees holding either line-of-business or IT positions.

The survey indicated that, when given a choice, more enterprise employees would choose a Treo smartphone over any other competing product.

One of the top reasons cited by survey participants was choice of operating system. Palm recently introduced its first Windows Mobile Treo, after years of making only Palm OS ones.

In addition, Frost & Sullivan assessed the return on investment (ROI) of Treo smartphones used in a range of businesses and conservatively determined the average payback period to be less than two months.

The results also reported that sales and field agents experienced productivity gains that equaled $11,125 in average savings per agent each year.

Some Perspective

Although Palm may have a very successful smartphone in the U.S., the same really can't be said of the rest of the world.

In Europe, for example, Nokia has a dominant position in this area.

And Palm hasn't been anywhere near as successful in Asia as the company had hoped.

Also, this survey depends on the definition of the word "smartphone." Some would consider Research in Motion's BlackBerry line to be the most successful smartphones in the U.S., while others would call them very successful cellular-wireless handhelds.