Device Choice in the Enterprise

Friday, February 8th, 2013 Chris Witeck, Director Product Marketing

This is part #2 of our blog talking about the recently released Mobile Enterprise Report. In Part #1, I talked about ‘BYOD in the Enterprise.’ Today we are talking about device choice in the Enterprise.

When talking about what devices IT is allowing in the Enterprise, I thought it would be interesting to compare this to what users are choosing. Fortunately we can do that by looking at the iPass Mobile Workforce report- which is our quarterly report focused on mobile workers.

When looking at the data from our Mobile Workforce report, you definitely see that contrary to the overall consumer market where Android is dominating of late, the mobile worker in the Enterprise definitely prefers an iPhone. While BlackBerry is still popular in the Enterprise, it is projected to be the 4th device of choice in 2013.

Let’s compare this to what IT says in terms of what devices they are managing in the Enterprise, and how that has changed from 2011 to the end of 2012.

What we see here is just how fast the iPhone and iPad have moved into the preferred position with both the mobile user and IT, along with some impressive gains for Android based devices as well. What else is interesting is that while BlackBerry is in decline, just how many organizations are still supporting BlackBerry devices (62% in 2012).

While this is good news for BlackBerry as they try to ride the wave with BlackBerry 10 in 2013, the fact that mobile workers do not think so highly of BlackBerry (as we saw in the first chart) shows that BlackBerry may have some work ahead of them.

This also reflects a trend that we have been seeing for a while — organizations are moving from supporting just a single device to allowing more choice to the user, either by allowing the worker to bring their own device or by IT supporting a wider range of devices. So an organization that several years ago may have just supported BlackBerry is now likely supporting an iOS and Android device.

In fact, we asked IT Professionals what their plans were for both BlackBerry 10 and Microsoft Windows Phone 8 in 2013 to get a gauge if either platform may gain traction with the Enterprise.

What we found is that organizations were more likely to support Windows Phone 8 in 2013 than BlackBerry by a significant margin, even more so in Europe where Nokia has a strong presence with their Microsoft-branded smartphones. Now we asked this question just after Windows Phone 8 was released and before BlackBerry 10 availability so these numbers may change based on actual impressions, but it also reinforces that BlackBerry has some work to do to gain back the support of both mobile workers and IT professionals.

The last point I want to end with in today’s blog is an interesting set of data we are seeing around tablets. One thing we have learned in previous Mobile Workforce Reports is that up to this point tablets were mostly purchased and used by mobile workers. Meaning that they were not something IT was provisioning to their workforce in large numbers. Tablets were the stereotypical BYOD device, but that is changing and we see evidence to support this in this year’s Mobile Enterprise Report.

When we first asked IT if they were supporting tablets for their workforce back in 2011, it was something that for the most part was given just to the executive team and then a handful of folks throughout the rest of the organization. What we see when we asked the same question at the end of 2012 is that increasingly tablets are being given out to the rest of the organization. While I would still expect to see user choice and BYOD to have a strong influence here, it also shows that tablets are being embraced as more than just a consumer device and as a Enterprise productivity tool.

So as you can see- we are seeing some really interesting data in this year’s Mobile Enterprise Report. Make sure to download the report to see for yourself. We will also be hosting an informative webinar to cover the details of the report with MobileIron. Be sure to check back on Monday, when we talk more about the highlights of this year’s Mobile Enterprise Report.

Tags: BYOD, Reports, smartphone, tablet