Global CIO: Apple iOS Crushes Google Android In Enterprise

The iPad's far more than just a cool new gadget, it's not just the latest fanboy fetish, and it's anything but simply a supersized iPhone.

Instead, the iPad has proven to be a powerful—dare I say revolutionary?—business tool that allows not only executives but also mainstream workers throughout the organization to see, manipulate, and analyze ideas and possibilities more simply and more rapidly than they've ever been able to do before.

This accelerates the generation of ideas, the analysis of possibilities, the collaborative impact of mobile organizations, and the visual presentation of ideas that—whether we like it or not—is becoming the norm in our frenetic and visual-oriented world.

The iPad's not perfect, and lots of other companies will come out with terrific alternatives, such as the Blackberry Playbook and also many others that will be based on Android's forthcoming tablet-specific OS and Windows Phone 7 as well.

But CIOs in the here and now are showing an intense and rapidly expanding desire to make the iPad not just a status symbol for a handful of executives but rather a widespread and essential element of their IT-powered business strategy.

And to give you a better sense of which mobile devices your fellow CIOs have been selecting, here are several key findings from the Good quarterly report:

**Among the thousands of customers using the Good For Enterprise security and management tool, more than 60% support both iOS and Android devices, while 27% support devices from three or more mobile platforms

**iOS devices—both smartphones and tablets—represented more than 65% of net new activations from Oct. 1-Dec. 31

**Android devices—both smartphones and tablets—held steady about about 30% for all net new activations over the period

**iPad's share of overall net activations grew from 14% in Q3 to 22% in Q4

**For smartphones only, iPhones accounted for 58% of all activations, with 42% for Android devices

**For Q4, Windows Mobile devices dropped off of Good's Top 10 list of activated devices

**Symbian devices also fell off that Top 10 list for Q4

By industry, the top three verticals ranked by activations for the last four months of the year were financial services, which accounted for more than 25% of all turn-ons; healthcare, averaging about 18%; and legal/professional services at about 16%.

For those same four months, iPad activations were most prevalent in financial services as that sector accelerated its leading iPad adoption rate from 28% in September to 40% of all iPad activations in December.

RECOMMENDED READING:

Global CIO: Global CIO: Top 10 Reasons Steve Jobs & Apple Are The Future Of IT

Global CIO: Global CIO: The Awesome Transformative Power Of The Apple iPad

Global CIO: Global CIO: Apple Storms The Enterprise As iPad And iPhone Surge

Global CIO: Apple Hammers Google Over Tablet Flaws

Global CIO: The PC Is Dying; Long Live The iPad!

Global CIO: The Year Of iPad: Apple Booms In Business And In China

Global CIO: Global CIO: Inside Steve Jobs' Head: The Supremacy Of Software

Global CIO: Global CIO: The Top 10 Most Influential IT Vendors (Apple And Facebook?)

Global CIO: Global CIO: Steve Jobs Declares War On Google

Global CIO: Global CIO: Apple's Steve Jobs Torpedoes Another Stale Business Model

Global CIO: Steve Jobs Creating New-Age Broadcasting Network?

Global CIO: Global CIO: Apple CEO Steve Jobs Should Tell Sen. Schumer To Shut Up

Global CIO: Global CIO: Why Apple's iPad Will Be A Great Business Device

Global CIO: Global CIO: Is IBM Or Apple The World's #1 Tech Brand?

Bob Evans is senior VP and director of InformationWeek's Global CIO unit.

To find out more about Bob Evans, please visit his page.

For more Global CIO perspectives, check out Global CIO,
or write to Bob at [email protected].