iOS 7 Takes Over the Enterprise Device Marketplace

Perhaps a decade or so ago, if you entered any corporate meeting room, you would have found a lot of Blackberry devices in use. They were the go-to choice for managers and executives, since their maker, Research in Motion, pitched them as the most corporate-friendly devices on the market.

Today, however, Blackberry remains a highly troubled company and Apple’s iPhone has replaced the Blackberry as the device of choice in corporate meeting rooms. Apple, for its part, is aware of the iPhone’s appeal to Corporate America, and as a result, seems to keep adding more and more business friendly features with each new iOS release. The most recent iteration, iOS 7, seems to be particularly well-suited for the workplace.

“If iOS originally snuck in the boardroom’s back door and adapted, then iOS 7 strolled confidently in the front door, jammed with new features to help businesses protect their data, encourage intra-office collaboration, and communicate with customers,” wrote Joel Mathis for Macworld recently. 

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Mathis outlines a number of reasons why the latest release of the Apple mobile device operating system is appealing even more widely to companies, both in the U.S. and abroad. His data is drawn from interviews Macworld conducted with enterprise communications experts. To wit:

Device security: Once the forte of Blackberry, this feature now has to be handed to Apple as an advantage. Since corporate data is very vulnerable to theft via lost or stolen devices, the iPhone’s activation lock feature, which allows the owner of a stolen phone to literally render the phone useless to anyone who lifts it, coupled with the fingerprint-activated lock new to iOS 7, are large parts of the appeal.

App management: Since many iPhones in the workplace today are for both personal and work use – the “bring your own device” model is rampant in companies today, this can present problems for IT personnel who need to management apps and data on the devices. According to Macworld’s Mathis, iOS 7 includes a number of features that help IT departments manage employees’ access to corporate apps and data while the employees’ personal apps and data and are left alone.

Collaboration: The iPhone’s AirDrop function allows nearby iPhone users to exchange files, which is a particularly appealing function for employees collaborating on a project or working as a team. It saves time by eliminating the need to upload and download files.

Widespread adoption: Apple apparently enjoys one of the best upgrade rates in the industry. By some estimates, 52 percent of all iOS devices were updated to iOS 7 within a week of its release. For Android, this number comes in at around 33 percent.

Apple, aware of its appeal in the workplace, has taken steps to broaden that appeal even further. For a device that began as the ultimate consumer electronics possession, its penetration of the enterprise has been truly impressive. Corporate users of the latest iteration do have one major complaint, however: longer battery life, please.