Mobile Devices

December 17, 2013

Corporate Mobile Market Prefers iOS over Android or Windows

Founded in 1995, Intermedia was one of the first companies to offer hosted Microsoft Exchange services. Today, with the exclusion of Microsoft, it is the largest provider of hosted Exchange, with around 90,000 customers and 700,000 users.

Every year, Intermedia publishes an annual report entitled the "2013 Small + Medium Business Mobile Trends Report." This year’s report shows that for the 10 month period between January and October of 2013, iOS devices represented 76 percent of total activations.

A breakdown of the top three companies in device activations looks like this: Apple - 190,000, Samsung - 29,000, Motorola - 13,800. You may notice that there is someone missing. There is no mention of BlackBerry devices, which were once heralded as the corporate device of choice.

Interestingly, the numbers show that although Apple activations increase after the holidays, the days surrounding Apple release cycles show a much a stronger correlation with activation spikes.

Windows smartphones and tablets, meanwhile, witnessed a 93 percent activation increase in the first 10 months of 2013. It seems that Microsoft is slowly but surely creeping up on Samsung. This could be due to Microsoft’s recent aggressive mobile agenda.

Looking ahead, Intermedia predicts that this could make Microsoft a viable threat to Samsung and Apple. However, it also notes that a 93-percent increase isn’t so hard to accomplish when you didn’t have that many the year before.

The report also revealed that, for smaller businesses, Android handily beats Windows’ mobile device volume. Among enterprise-scale clients, on the other hand, Microsoft is gaining market momentum that could soon see it best Android.

Intermedia believes that the dynamics of this are somewhat simple: Larger companies require more new machines to interlace into their existing IT infrastructure. This is something that Microsoft has stressed as a feature of Windows 8.1-based tablets.

Another interesting revelation from the study is SMBs’ predilection for the iPhone 5S over the cheaper 5C. Since launching in October, the iPhone 5S rang up 6,906 activations, compared to the significantly lower 1,521 for the 5C. In fact, the iPhone 5, 4S and 4 all saw more activations than the newer low-cost model.

Overall, the report shows that there has been very steady growth for the SMB mobile market at large. The total combination of device activations has grown from 88,680 in 2011, to 217,050 in 2012 to 249,872 in just the first 10 months of 2013.

Keeping in mind that these results are only for activations in Intermedia’s network, we can see from the report that iOS mobile devices are standing on solid ground with small firms and are becoming more attractive to large scale companies as well. And, while Android stands firm in second place, we are starting to see Microsoft catch up at an increasing rate.




Edited by Blaise McNamee


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