In a market that was once dominated by RIM and CrackBerry smartphones, Apple is fast becoming the provider of choice for businesses, according to a new report.
With RIM suffering somewhat of a downturn in sales, Apple’s iPhone and iPad are filling the void, with Android currently a smaller player in the world of power ties and pinstripe suits. Apple’s iPad is doing so well, in fact, that it made up 95% of tablet activations in the enterprise for the months of March through June of this year, with Android tablets making up just 3.1%…
Just to drive that point home, the research by Good.com claims that there were more iPads activated during the period than Android tablets and smartphones combined. Not bad for a device that’s supposedly just for watching movies and reading web pages, is it?
“In the second quarter of 2011, the most striking thing is Good’s users activated more iPad tablets than Android smartphones and tablets combined,” said John Herrema, senior vice president of corporate strategy at Good Technology. “While Android may be gaining smartphone market share with consumers, our business users are clearly gravitating to the iPad and doing so in large numbers. This is especially true in the Financial Services sector, which drove nearly half of all Good’s iPad activations over the quarter.”
Another interesting statistic comes in in the form of smartphone activations. Of the devices activated, again during the March through June period, 66% were iPhones and 33% Android-powered smartphones.
None of this can be pleasurable reading for RIM, who’s BlackBerry PlayBook tablet has been met with limited applause among the tech press and end users. Limited by software problems as well as reported hardware issues, the PlayBook has not been the return to fame that RIM needed, though these are still early days for the company’s tablet.
Android’s power is in its ability to spread like wildfire, thanks to the numerous manufacturers eager to add it to their own (often sub-par) hardware. Whether the business sector will choose those over a polished, secure iPad remains to be seen, however.
Could an iPad HD be Apple’s secret weapon in the war for the enterprise? An iPad sporting a high-res screen would do wonders for those speadsheets and pie charts, no?
[Engadget]