The $0 value that providers place on customer time whilst waiting on the telephone can be infuriating. Perhaps an order of 25 phones will get some personalised service from the cell provider sales rep. Individuals however would be chewing through perhaps 50 hours of either unpaid time at home or paid time at work. One person spending a day-and-a-half now looks cheap.

As for the contracts - This is where BYOD gets easy. The staff-member has the contract, the company just reimburses or pays a percentage or set monthly amount. The company has no contracts - unless they have some custom service from the cell-provider that only companies get! Even then a planned roll-out should allow some synchronisation. Just tell the staff not to renew their contracts after a certain date as the company will provide!

Products such as MAAS purportedly can manage multiple brands of smartphone and differentiate between company and personal data on a phone.

The end game is supposed to be a vast increase in productivity, and this is part of the initial business case to purchase bulk smartphones in the first place. Companies are essentially getting all staff on 24 hour call for no extra cost than a smartphone above a separate company dumb-phone. They lose social networking time. They gain online ordering and database access. They lose a few personal calls. They win GPS location. It's a balance. Take it too far one way and staff will merely switch off there phones after hours.

Doesn't matter what brand of phone it is. This article is simplistic and sensationalises the trivial.