LONDON, UK: Laptops and smart phones are the mobile computing products most commonly used by European chief executive officers (CXOs).

However, web-based collaboration tools, valuable particularly for business travel, are gradually gaining importance. Mobile-based applications, both location-based and multimedia contents, are relatively new concepts offering significant potential for service providers.

New analysis from Frost & Sullivan, 2009 European CXOs' Choice: Computing Products and Services, finds that the European CXOs expect the mobile communication as well as the computing products and services they use to be utilitarian rather than full of frills.

“Of the various mobile communication and computing products and services, all European CXOs surveyed in this research use or own laptops/notebooks,” says Frost & Sullivan, Research manager Krishnendu Roy. “They perceive reliability as the core function of their laptop/notebook with all other features being secondary.”

Smart phone ownership increased dramatically from 2008 to 2009, with the number of European CXOs now owning a smart phone doubling. This significant increase has directly affected standard feature phone ownership rates. Nearly all European CXOs perceive smart phones to be strictly business phones, while standard feature phones are seen as personal use phones. In either case, battery life and ease of use are perceived as the most important features.

“Overall, among those using web-based collaboration tools, 70 per cent consider ease-of-use as the most important feature. Interestingly, having a powerful feature set is least important to European CXOs as few of them use mobile multimedia content applications or mobile location based applications.” concluded Roy.