What Starbucks can teach Microsoft..

So you’d think Starbucks wouldn’t have much to teach Microsoft except for um, you know, how to make better lattes for the office cafeteria.

But Starbucks does have an interesting little bit of information to give the tech giants… as Robert Scoble picked up earlier this week. Starbucks gets data on who uses the wifi in their stores and what devices they are using to access it on: whether it’s a PC, a Mac, a smartphone or whatever.

Okay it’s not comprehensive, but it’s an interesting barometer of how the public use technology.

And the big finding? – laptop use is actually declining in Starbucks cafes, while the use of mobile devices, including tablets, has rocketed up. Scoble also reports that the Starbucks CIO told him that iDevices from Apple are used more in its stores than any others.

Okay there’s definitely a distortion here- perhaps Apple customers are just more likely to work in coffee shops (I make no comment), but it skewed as it may be, it does show a trend.

Gadget sales are important of course, but how people use their gadgets is perhaps even more interesting, though hard to quantify. The Starbucks data just gives a little insight into the future… and the future is mobile.

[via Scobelizer]