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iPad driving massive growth for iOS in enterprise (survey)

Despite speculation that iPad 2 sales have been a letdown for Apple, the device is driving growth for iOS in general in the enterprise world.
Written by Rachel King, Contributor

Although the iPad is a runaway success in the tablet market -- the point where critics and executives have just acknowledged it simply "an iPad market" -- Apple's tablet has made considerable headway in the enterprise world as well.

Thanks to the iPad, iOS in general has grown in popularity and use among enterprise customers, which can be seen in the graph below according to a new survey from Good Technology, a company dedicated to a push e-mail and device management along with security products for mobile phones. Good's enterprise mobile clientele includes 49 of the Fortune 100.

Here are some of the highlights from the report covering activations in enterprise during the third quarter of 2011:

  • iOS tablets represent over 96 percent of total tablet activations
  • Android tablets increased slightly to 4 percent of overall tablet activations for the quarter
  • iOS devices (iPhone, iPad and iPod touch), accounted for over 70 percent of activations
  • Android smartphones represented nearly 39 percent of all smartphone activations, whereas the iPhone nabbed 61 percent
  • Among the top 10 industry verticals, financial services continued to see the highest level of iPad activation, accounting for 46 percent for the quarter—more than tripling the amount of activation in any other industry

The findings are overwhelmingly more obvious when demonstrated in this graph below:

Yet somehow, despite all of this, iPad 2 sales have still been construed as somewhat disappointing. The bar is definitely high for the iPad 3 and any other device that means to challenge it.

Android continues to gain market share overall -- which is indisputable based on Android's continued dominance of the mobile platform market, at least in the United States, for the last several months. Nevertheless, Good concludes that enterprise end users are showing clear preference for Apple products these days.

However, these numbers very well could change drastically within the next year. On the one hand, the iPhone 4S is already doing well for itself, despite a mixed welcome when it was unveiled earlier this month. Yet, there are plenty more Android handsets on the way -- and likely (or hopefully) much better ones with the launch of Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich), starting with the newly-revealed Samsung Galaxy Nexus.

[Charts via Good Technology]

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