Of 402 financial advisers polled, 45 percent said they would choose an Apple iPhone or iPad, while 14 percent would pick a BlackBerry.
The research firm, which focuses on financial services, conducted the survey in March, well before the recent RIM outage which left large pockets of BlackBerry users around the world without access to e-mail and other functions.
“I’m not surprised that Apple had made inroads, but I am surprised that the statistic was that weighted against the BlackBerry,” said Phil Michaels, head of business development at Aegis Capital Corp.
Michaels said about 90 percent of the advisers at his company use BlackBerry smartphones because of the ease of key functions and integrated calendar availability.
“I always thought BlackBerrys were still preferred on the business side and Apple was more preferred on the individual user side - the creative, non-business side,” he said.
The study found that using mobile devices was increasingly important to advisers, many of whom service clients with hand-held devices who have access to online brokerage services.
Nearly half the advisers surveyed said having access to business applications was an “important” or “very important” part of their technology strategy for 2011.
