It's official, and
it's been official for a while --
Android is far and away the most
popular smartphone OS in
America. Ever since January
2011, when the platform
surpassed RIM to take the top
spot for the first time in
comScore's monthly market share
rankings, Google's operating
system has continued to grow its
user base, which accounts for
52% of the market as of this
January.
This growth has been created on
the back of substantial software
upgrades, in the form of Ice
Cream Sandwich and Jelly Bean
(Android 4.0 and 4.1,
respectively), as well as
increasingly impressive hardware
from OEMs like Samsung, HTC,
Sony, Motorola and LG. Last
year's Samsung Galaxy S III was
the first phone to dethrone the
iPhone in total quarterly sales in
years, according to research from
Strategy Analytics, though the
subsequent release of the iPhone
5 saw Apple retake the top spot
quickly thereafter.
[ DO'S AND DON'TS: Using
Android in business
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It's easy to find a host of reasons
for Android's ascendance among
consumers -- a wide variety of
devices offers more choice to
prospective buyers, stronger
hardware and bigger screens
appeal to fans of the latest and
greatest, and as of Android 4.0
and 4.1, the interface is arguably
more impressive than the latest
version of Apple iOS.
What's less simple, however, is
figuring out why that dominance
has taken such a long time to
translate into broader uptake in
the business world -- the
conventional wisdom is that the
iPhone supplanted the BlackBerry
as the enterprise smartphone of
choice thanks to its own wave of
popularity with the consumer,
which gave rise to the bring-
your-own-device phenomenon.
In contrast, Android has only
recently begun to become a
popular option for business
users, despite its ballooning
overall sales numbers. So what
gives?
New management, new use cases
For starters, the perception of
security issues in the Android
platform have limited its appeal
to businesses and made IT
departments jumpy about a large
number of Android devices
accessing the network.
However, the past year or so has
seen big changes in that state of
affairs, says Morten Grauballe, an
executive vice president in charge
of corporate development and
strategy at Red Bend Software,
which provides over-the-air
firmware update capability to
many top Android OEMs.
"Android had a disadvantage in
the enterprise compared to iOS
because iOS was just more
secure," Grauballe says. "What's
happened over the last 12
months is that the mobile device
management solutions that
evolved around both iOS and
Android ... [have] grown in
functionality when it comes to
supporting the devices, so I think
CIOs in enterprises are feeling
more comfortable letting Android
devices on their network."
Along with improved
manageability, Forrester analyst
David Johnson says that a new
crop of use cases is helping
broaden Android adoption in the
business world. One such new
application is what he calls
"Android-on-a-stick," which is
designed to provide a full
desktop experience for highly
mobile users like college students
and consultants.
"Basically it's a headless Android
device -- complete with quad-
core CPU, but it's on a stick that
has an HDMI end on it," Johnson
explains. "[Users] can plug it into
most any monitor or television
that has an HDMI port and it
works, but is powered by a USB
port. Embedded Bluetooth and
Wi-Fi allow it to connect to a
keyboard and mouse, and gain
access to a network."
Moreover, the idea of dedicated-
use consumer devices running
Android is beginning to get more
popular, he says.
"There is significant interest in
using low-cost, consumer-grade
tablets and smartphones for a
whole host of new uses, from
movie ticket scanning at the
theater front door, to electronic
on-board recorders (EOBR) for
truckers," according to Johnson.
"In applications where the device
needs to be fully ruggedized,
Android is preferred because
manufacturers can build the
devices precisely to suit the
need."
Custom devices aside, the cost
advantages of Android are
substantial for this type of
bespoke application, particularly
in the tablet sector. To give an
example: A Google Nexus 7
tablet, as of this writing, retails
for $200. That buys a 7-inch,
216ppi display, 16GB of storage
and 1GB of RAM. By contrast,
the cheapest iPad option
available, at $329, is the basic
version of the iPad Mini, which
has a larger but lower-resolution
screen and half as much
available RAM with the same
amount of storage.
Android popular now, but plenty
of future demand for Apple
A recent survey of nearly 10,000
global IT workers performed by
Forrester Research offers a clear
indication that Android adoption
in the enterprise has grown --
along with several statistics that
could mean that growth will be
short-lived.
According to the February Mobile
Workforce Adoption Survey,
Android has actually surpassed
Apple as the most-used type of
business smartphone, as shown
below:
Credit: Forrester Research
While that's clearly an important
milestone, particularly in light of
the fact that nearly half of
respondents said they used
smartphones in the course of
their duties, the study also found
that one-third of those wanted an
iPhone for their next work device,
compared to just 22% who
wanted an Android phone.
Credit: Forrester Research
Despite the aforementioned
economic advantages for Android
tablets, the business tablet world
still appears to be Apple's. The
iPad's usage share among
Forrester's respondents is more
than double the size of
Android's.
Credit: Forrester Research
The numbers also show that
Apple tablets are more desired by
the IT workers surveyed, by a
ratio of about 2:1. (As a side
note, there's a surprisingly large
amount of interest in Windows
tablets, outstripping both Android
and Apple.)
Clearly, while Google's platform
has made progress in the
business world, there are major
hurdles to overcome.
iOS users dipping toes into
Android
The case of one user, who
primarily uses iOS but has taken
baby steps toward Android
adoption, is illustrative. Banner
Engineering is a Minneapolis-
based manufacturer of industrial
equipment like sensors, machine
safety systems and wireless
controllers. The company's
enormous selection of available
products -- more than 30,000
individual SKUs -- means that
providing detailed information on
each one is a challenge for sales
representatives in the field.
"The old story was our sales reps
and distributors would travel
around in their cars with trunk
loads full of literature and
product material," says IT
Director Kellie Christensen. "If
you go to a customer and they
ask about a certain product
application opportunity, you may
or may not have that material
handy."
Obviously, this was far from an
optimal solution, so Banner
embarked on a project that
brought these reams of
documentation to the digital
realm. The company now issues
iPads to sales staff, who can use
them as a reference and
presentation tool.
"One of our specialties is
[working] with our customer to
specialize products -- so we'll
have a standard product ... and if
they need a slight modification to
that product, or even an
extensive one, we work with that
customer to create what we call
product specials," Christensen
says.
With just one device
manufacturer to support, iOS
seemed like the logical choice.
"Internally, we chose iOS because
it's a lot more predictable, a lot
more secure. It's really been
quite easy for us to support," she
says. "We're a smaller shop, we
have a smaller IT group here, and
[Android] would just be too much
for us to support."
However, Banner works with
channel partners as well as its
own sales staff. And not all of
those partners wanted to use the
iPad. Christensen says that the
company used a third-party
developer to translate the app
over to Android.
The process was pleasantly
straightforward, she notes.
"It actually was fairly easy to
port [the app] over to Android
devices. The biggest thing that
we were dealing with from a
design standpoint was that the
screen was different ... and
making sure that those buttons
were still friendly to use and that
everything could be seen on the
screen," Christensen says.
Mobility vets: Don't sweat
security, fragmentation too much
CompanionLink Software
Marketing Director Rushang Shah
says that this multi-platform
environment has its own appeal
to businesses, complexity issues
aside.
"The business audience we've
always catered to is one that
values options more than being
tied into one system like Apple,"
he argues. "That is one of the
major drivers of Android's growth
in the business market --
business users want options."
CompanionLink has made mobile
device sync software since the
days of Palm OS. Shah says CEO
Wayland Bruns was one of about
30 people present at Palm's first
developer conference, 18 years
ago.
While the conventional wisdom
holds that the two main factors
holding back Android growth are
security and platform
fragmentation, Bruns and Shah
say they question how valid
those concerns still are.
According to Bruns, the issues
caused by the complexity of the
Android environment -- different
devices, different software
versions, etc. -- have been
evaporating of late.
The credit for this goes to Google,
he says. Ever since Android
versions 2.2 and 2.3 (Froyo and
Gingerbread), the company has
been energetically attacking
fragmentation problems.
"The API functions are better
than ever at allowing us to add a
new feature for new phones, and
still be able to run the same
software on older phones. Two
years ago, we were bombarded by
bugs and incompatibilities
related to obscure phone
models," Bruns says. "It has now
been months since we have had
such problems, even though we
support the older phones as well
as the newest Jelly Bean phones
and tablets."
As to security, Shah says, there's
nothing intrinsically less secure
about the Android platform than
iOS.
"Inherently, I don't think there's
anything about the Android
platform that's more risky than
iOS. Yeah, Apple has this aura of
'we lock down things' but ... it's
just as risky," he says.
Android/Chrome?
But will Android still be Android
tomorrow? Rumors that Google
would merge the mobile OS with
its growing Chrome ecosystem
started in earnest after the news
in mid-March that longtime
Android chief Andy Rubin would
be making way for Sundar Pichai,
who heads up Chrome and
Google Apps.
The answer, for the moment, is
yes, according to Google
Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt,
who said that the two products
would remain separate during a
recent trip to India.
That said, tight integration with
Google's existing product
infrastructure -- from Gmail to
Google + to any number of other
offerings -- has long been a
hallmark of Android, and further
blurring of the lines between
Chrome and Android is far from
impossible.
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