There may still be a lot of questions surrounding the topic of tablets in field service industries – Should techs be equipped with both laptops AND tablets? Go with iPad, rugged or other? Is it worth the investment? – but one thing is certain: tablet use by field service businesses is showing continued growth. And that may be the answer that matters most.

Report after report show that tablet use is on the rise, and it’s benefiting techs and business.

And the fit is natural. With sleeker designs, light weight, no physical keyboard, and smooth touch screen technology, tablets are clear of the laptop non-essentials but more conducive than smartphones, all while packing way more power in a portable device.

It also helps that managers have so many options to choose from. The $499 iPad is getting a lot of acclaim, but Google’s Nexus 7 is picking up, with similar power in a smaller size – and lesser prize, at $199. But it’s not just an Apple/Android game, with a range of options including Amazon’s Kindle Fire, as well as devices from Blackberry and Microsoft.

In a recent CIO article, Genentech’s mobility team manager, Paul Lanzi, shared his views on why he has made his company one of the biggest iPad enterprise adopters in the world. In as early as fall of 2010, the company began investing in iPads for their techs, and today own 14,274 of Apple’s tablets, and around the same number of iPhones. In the last ten months alone, the company has purchased 10,000 of its iPads.

“Four-hundred dollars to make a knowledge worker 10% more productive is money extremely well spent,” says Lanzi.

Have you invested in tablets for your tech team yet? Which models will you be going with?

For more information on our mobile apps, including dozens of features and developed for both iOS and Android, visit FieldOne’s Sky Mobile and Terra Mobile.