Surprise! iOS still beating Android in enterprise penetration

Okay, it's not that big of a surprise, but Good Technology's latest data from their enterprise customers confirm that yes, iOS is killing Android in the business world. In the first quarter of the year, the iPhone 4S accounted for 37% of Good's activations, followed by the iPad 2 with 17.7%, while the new iPad is already claiming 12.1%. The iPhone 4, original iPad, and iPhone 3GS occupy other top spots before Android devices start making the list. By comparison, they scored only 26.1% smartphone penetration and 2.7% tablet presentation. These stats continue the trend initially identified by Good in January.

Of course, Good is often the go-to solution for companies wanting to roll out and manage something other than BlackBerry, which means we don't have too much context on how well the traditional enterprise leader is faring by comparison, but we've seen lots of studies detailing RIM's downward spiral, and plenty of others corroborating the growing popularity of iOS devices in the enterprise market.

Part of the reason for the Apple's success relative to Android is the uniformity of the devices. Like BlackBerry, iPhones and iPads come from one end-to-end vendor and so, while they have their own benefits and drawbacks, those benefits and drawbacks are a constant. Once you know how iOS works on ActiveSync or Good, you know how all the iPhones and iPads deployed in your enterprise will work on ActiveSync or Good. It makes everything from rollout to support easier.

With Android, Google has left a lot of the implementation details up to the individual manufacturers and carriers, and so ActiveSync and app compatibility can vary from line to line or even device to device. Having that many more targets drastically increases complexity for both deployment and support.

Apple has also been making it a point to focus on enterprise-friendly features and to tout business adoption figures in their conference calls. Obviously, it's paying off.

Has your boss issued you an iPhone? How many corporate Android handsets have you seen around the office?

Source: Network World