According to IDG Connect’s “The iPad for Business Survey”, 91% of IT and business professionals who own an Apple iPad said they use the device at work. The survey is based on interviews with business and IT professionals from regions across the world.

The sur­vey discovered that 51% always use their iPad at work, while 40% said it is used there some­times. In the Middle East and Africa, more than 70% always use it at work.

And 12% of work­ers indic­ated that the iPad has com­pletely replaced their laptop. Another 54% said the iPad has partly replaced their laptop — com­ple­ment­ing it whilst on the move.

“If a major­ity of pro­fes­sion­als still use laptops, the iPad has cer­tainly cur­tailed usage levels,” the sur­vey states. “Nearly three-​quarters of respond­ents say that they ‘carry their laptop around less’ now that they own an iPad.”

However only 6% of respond­ents said the iPad has com­pletely replaced their desktop. The iPad is fantastic due its portability and instant power on but typical business based software such as Excel, Word etc are difficult to use/edit on the iPad.

“For most, the iPad isn’t a sub­sti­tute for an exist­ing tool or device,” IDG said. “Instead, it’s a sup­ple­ment, albeit one with func­tion­al­ity that over­laps with other devices. As a res­ult, the iPad seems to have carved out a niche for itself at the par­tial expense of sev­eral rival tablets.”

A classic use for an iPad in business is the delivery of sales presentations with prospective clients. Plus Two has seen a huge level interest in recent months for our PresentiaFX presentation app. It has a player for the iPad (and Android/BlackBerry Tablets) which allows corporate organisations to synch presentation content directly to iPads and control brand and message centrally from their Marketing dept. You can watch a video about our iPad presentation app here.

The most com­mon use of the iPad among pro­fes­sion­als is Web brows­ing, which 79% said they “always” use the device for browsing. Read­ing fol­lowed closely with 76%, news con­sump­tion had 73%, and work com­mu­nic­a­tion earned 54%. Over 70% now claim to buy fewer prin­ted books and newspapers.

The iPad has quickly become an IT pro­fes­sion­als’ favour­ite device for com­put­ing whilst on the move, with 79% say­ing they always use their iPads out­side of their home.

In their last quarterly earn­ings report in Octo­ber, Apple offi­cials revealed that 90% of the For­tune 500 were deploy­ing or test­ing the iPad, even though the device had only been avail­able on the mar­ket for the previous 18 months.

The iPad’s pres­ence at work has been boos­ted by employ­ees who have pur­chased them with their own money. The sur­vey reveals that over­all, about a quarter of respond­ents have their iPad sup­plied by their employer. This climbs sharply in Africa (47%) and Europe (40%).