BYOD: Surprising Results in the Enterprise

In a head to head comparison performed by Good Technology, Apple’s iOS is dominating the enterprise BYOD market four to one over Android.

In total, iOS accounted for 83.9% of the devices activated in the last quarter by Good’s clientele (Good Technology offers mobile device management with thousands of customers in the private and government sectors). This includes all varieties of iPhone from version 3G and up, and all iPad generations. The remaining 16.1% were Android devices including the Motorola Droid (the most with 1.6%) and Samsung Galaxy.

Given that the BYOD is a user generated phenomenon, the numbers don’t reflect the general population’s adoption of smartphones where Android holds over 50% of the market. Tablet market share is on the move too, with some people predicting the iPad with be dethroned this quarter by the slew of Android tablets available (Already Amazon’s Kindle Fire is the second best selling tablet - but that’s another story).

Digging deeper into Good’s research, it is clear the iPad dominated over all Android tablets with 97% of activations (of tablets). But for smartphones Apple held a smaller margin at 55%. The survey did not include any other smartphones or tablets such as those from RIM or Microsoft.

So what is driving Apple’s edge in the enterprise market? According to a vice president at Gartner, Apple’s advantage for the enterprise is two-fold: 1)Performance vs. cost, 2) Application availability. Apple still provides superior hardware for the price, and more enterprise applications have been developed for the iPad than for Android - as of now.

The introduction of Windows 8 and supported tablets is likely to shake up the market. But it is anyone’s guess whether or not Microsoft will be able to convert its enterprise customers to Windows tablet users too. Good Technology will be adding Windows tracking to its survey of activations so future reports will include at least one more player.

Who do you think will be leading the enterprise BYOD war in a years time?