May is Mobile Management Month at Cult of Mac, where we will be profiling a different mobile management company every weekday. You can find all previous entries here and read our Mobile Management manifesto here.
This post is brought to you by SolarWinds, an IT software management company with more than 93,000 customers worldwide – from Fortune 500 enterprises to small businesses. Click here to download a free 30-Day Trial of Mobile Admin from SolarWinds. Author: Denny LeCompte Coauthor: Stephanie Mitchell.
Which smartphone or tablet are you bringing to work?
With the constant stream of news emerging in the Apple versus Android battle, we think it’s time to look at which devices the IT pros are choosing, and how recent trends are affecting what devices are brought into work.
If smartphone market share says anything about popularity, it looks like Android is really killing it. Android’s US smartphone market share is estimated at 61%, while iPhone dropped down to 21%.
But let’s not forget about tablets. There’s a different story to be told about Apple here. The iPad has gained “unquestionable dominance” and is leading with 68% of the tablet market share according to a recent IDC survey.
So, where do IT admins fit into this trend? Do you carry an Android phone and an Apple tablet at work? We certainly can’t answer that question definitively, but through our recent acquisition of Rove Mobile Admin, the leader in mobile IT management, we do have some interesting market data to present.
Mobile Admin is an iOS, Android and BlackBerry app that lets IT admins manage their IT infrastructure and resolve issues from smartphones and tablets. With thousands of customers using Mobile Admin, we have some pretty good data as to which devices are the most popular for IT administrators.
We thought it would be interesting to see how our users’ devices break down and compare year over year and share our 3 key takeaways:
- BlackBerry has undeniably been struggling recently, meanwhile the Android/Apple battle wages on as it has been for some time. BlackBerry went from a 78% market share to a 42% market share of SolarWinds Mobile Admin users. What used to be a group dominated by BlackBerry in 2010 is now a group split nearly equally between BlackBerry and iOS, with Android now making up a significant portion of our users.
- What we’re witnessing is BYOD at work. Despite the hard times that BlackBerry has faced recently, these smartphones are still a big player in the enterprise world. However, corporations are now issuing more than just BlackBerrys, and most importantly, employees are bringing in their own mobile devices to work; these happen to be Android and iOS devices.
- The mobile war is moving inside the enterprise. While BlackBerry remains a favorite among IT departments because of its robust security and the BlackBerry Enterprise Server, Android and Apple have gained increased acceptance and deployment in the enterprise. iPad spending in the enterprise will increase greatly this year, the idea of ‘take an Apple to work’ has gained funding and IT support, while improvements and new features in iPhone iOS 4 in 2010 made it much more secure to use the device in corporations. Meanwhile, last year, Android released a new set of tools to help with enterprise adoption: a security, management, and remote access platform similar to BES. Needless to say, iOS and Android have enjoyed increased corporate deployment and acceptance in IT departments of BYODing these devices.
So what’s around the corner that will soon affect this BYOD trend?
Apple iPhone 5 is rumoured to be released in the next few months, and there’s lots of excitement surrounding supposed new features: a larger screen, a body made of Liquidmetal, a more robust chip, a new docking plug, and more.
Back in March at Mobile World Congress, many Android devices were released, unleashing lots of excitement for cool new tablets and smartphones running Ice Cream Sandwich.
Finally, with BlackBerry 10 being launched and demoed at BlackBerry World recently, good news about the newest operating system abounds. A new onscreen keyboard and camera system, a new UI, and very significantly, an OS that is will have multiple integrated layers of security. Will these improvements be enough to save Blackberry?
Get the “life” back into work/life balance – check out Mobile Admin.
