Business Owners Can’t Live Without Their Smartphones

As the workplace becomes increasingly mobile, smartphones have become indispensable to many owners of small and medium-sized businesses, according to a new survey.

Phone system provider RingCentral conducted a survey among 400 U.S. customers who own small and medium-sized businesses to determine how smartphones, such as BlackBerries and iPhones, have changed the way they do business.

The survey found that a large chunk of business is being conducted on smartphones, and they have outpaced landlines as the phone of choice. More than three-fourths (77%) of respondents said they use their smartphones the most to conduct business, as opposed to an office phone (22%) or home phone (1%). Almost half (47%) of respondents said they use a smartphone two-thirds of the time they are on the phone for work. Another third (34%) said they use their smartphone between one-third and two-thirds of the time.

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Most respondents (63%) still use their computer more for business than their smartphone for business—but 34% said they use their smartphone more for business.

As even more evidence of how smartphones have stolen the hearts of business owners, when asked the top thing they can’t live without, just as many respondents (40%) chose their smartphones as those who chose “having an intimate relationship.” We’ve seen intimacy and cell phones go neck and neck before (see “Which Is It: Cell Phone or Sex?”). The other options respondents could choose were morning coffee (17%) or checking social networking sites (3%).

RingCentral conducted the e-mail survey from March 12 to 16. 

Fund Flows Pick Up Steam in Q110

During the 12 months since stock markets bottomed in March 2009, worldwide bond and stock mutual fund net inflows eclipsed $1 trillion, about half of which was garnered in the U.S.

Strategic Insight (SI), an Asset International company, said that during the first quarter of 2010, U.S. mutual fund investors put an estimated $123 billion into stock and bond mutual funds.

The net inflows were the best for a quarter since the second quarter of 2009, when long-term mutual funds attracted a similar amount to the quarter just ending, according to SI. The first-quarter figures included long-term fund inflows of about $50 billion in March. Those included $15 billion of net new flows into equity funds and $35 billion of net new flows into bond funds, according to estimates from Strategic Insight’s Simfund database.

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“Looking back at prior bear markets, it has taken stock investors 12 to 18 months after a stock market trough to significantly re-engage with equities,” said Avi Nachmany, S.I.’s director of Research, in a news release. “Fund investors may slowly be overcoming their risk aversion and starting to respond to the fact that the average equity fund delivered over 50% return over the 12 months ended in March.”

International and global mutual funds continued to draw investor capital, taking in $28 billion in flows in the first quarter of 2010, as investors with higher risk appetites continued to seek global diversification in their portfolios. International/global funds marked their fourth consecutive quarter of net inflows. While the strengthening U.S. dollar lowered lately the returns of international equity funds vs. U.S. funds during Q1, demand for global diversification should persist, according to SI.

With money-market funds and deposit accounts continuing to provide near-zero yields, investors seeking income alternatives put about $87 billion into bond funds in the first quarter of 2010, including $35 billion in flows in March 2010. Leading the inflows were short- and intermediate-maturity corporate bond funds, with roughly $38 billion in combined net inflows in the quarter.


More information is available at www.sionline.com.

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