Wi-Fi roaming provider, iPass says that the Apple iPhone has displaced the BlackBerry as the top handset accessing Wi-Fi hotspots when roaming. The iPhone took a 45 percent market share, and overall business smartphone usage has increased to 91 percent.

Currently 42 percent of mobile employees use individually-liable smartphones for work, up from 34 percent last year. The report also found that this expansion within enterprises has also reduced the median age of a mobile employee to 41 -- indicating that mobile employees are no longer only business travelers; they are every knowledge worker with a smartphone.

"Today's mobile employees are critical to the success of every enterprise, contributing 240 more work hours a year than their non-mobile counterparts. Connectivity is essential because work is no longer where you go but what you do," said Evan Kaplan, president and CEO of iPass. "While increasing iPhone usage in the workplace was inevitable, this is the tipping point when the iPhone has overcome the Blackberry on its traditional enterprise turf, and business smartphones are in the hands of nearly every knowledge worker."

Smartphone Attachment

The report also found the saturation of mobile devices has led to a workforce that is sacrificing sleep and exercise for their jobs. One in three mobile employees claimed that they sleep less due to work and one in four mobile employees sleeps less than six hours a night. More than half reported that they exercise erratically or not at all -- 60 percent attributed lack of exercise to work. The report also found that mobile employees are emotionally attached to their smartphones -- 59 percent would feel disoriented, distraught or lonely if they were without a smartphone for even a week.

Other findings include:

• Mobile employees waste only about 28 minutes on technology distractions. The top two most time consuming technology distractions are work-related -- first work email, second technical issues and third social media.
• BlackBerry market share declined slightly from 35 percent in 2010 to 32 percent today, while Android nearly doubled market share year over year, growing into the number three spot (surpassing Nokia/Symbian) with 21 percent market share.
• Tablet ownership has grown to 44 percent of mobile employees, up from 33 percent in second quarter of 2011.
• Mobile employees describe themselves as highly proficient when it comes to technology (69%), compared to 6 percent who rated themselves as fairly proficient or non-proficient. As a result the majority of mobile employees only contact IT as a last resort (81%).