Huh?
We run Good and the ratio for us is 4:2 Android vs. iPhone. I know of two other companies locally that has a higher Android ratio with tablets. Something is screwy with these numbers.
Smartphone owners working for big business are activating far more iOS devices than they are Android ones - at least those who employed by firms using Good Technology's corporate email system are. Good this week revealed iPhone 4 activations - the process of tying a phone or tablet to Good's managed push email, calendar and …
i think more likely something is screwy with your sample selection of the corporate world. you've taken a sample of 3 companies and come to a conclusion. Good have taken a sample of ALL their customers, and come to a different conclusion. I know who's data I have more faith in a better representative of the whole picture.
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EXEC: SIMMONS! GET IN HERE!
IT TECH: Yessir?
EXEC: Ah Simmons...
IT TECH: Actually it's Simon sir...
EXEC: ...my daughter bought me this phone. It has a fruit on the back, some kind of designer I think, very trendy - my daughter has impeccable taste. Anyway, I want to be able to check my emails on it
IT TECH: That's an iPhone sir, we only support Blackberr...
EXEC: Well now we support these things too! Get on it.
IT TECH: Er, yes sir. Should we look into supporting Android handsets too?
EXEC: What handsets? Robots? Don't be stupid Simmons. Now you'll have to excuse me, I have a very important meeting in ten minutes.
IT TECH: *Sigh*
"Yes, I'd like to see the number of blackberry handsets that were attached to networks just for the sake of comparison. The iphone numbers look impressive but if there are as ten times as many blackberrys then it looks more like distorting the numbers to promote the iPhone."
You just don't get it - this is not about Blackberries as they would not use the service!! It is demonstrating how many IOS devices were activated compared to Android devices - basically saying that business / corporates are going Apple even more than regular consumers.
"......not reflected in the broader consumer market."
Hardly surprising! These business types are getting their iphone paid for by their employer, in the mistaken belief that the iPhone gives them some form of status.
WRONG!
The only impression you'll give is that you’re unable to grasp anything other than 'easy'. After all iOS is as easy as fisher price.
(even Woz, its creator, reckons it's pants!)
Think it's time someone checked Woz's facebook page, he did stated he was quoted out of content and the truth twisted to suit the reporters agenda.
What he did state was that he liked some parts of Android, the built in navigation (which will come to iOS anyway after it's out of beta, google have already stated this) and ability to fiddle around more with it, which you can do via jailbreaking. Not hardly surprising since he is an engineer, but as a day to day device, he using his iPhone.
Android has always felt like it's in beta to me (ICS is an brilliant improvement) but it is still overly complex for the most simple of tasks at times and it's crashes a lot more than iOS, what it is with these elitist android users that think you have to confuse the general population and have unnecessary complexity built in, otherwise it's not worth using. Will you be unhappy using ICS because it's easier to use than gingerbread?
Most business users what to get on with the job, not waste time fiddling. I like both platforms but iOS will remain my phone of choice, until it does everything my iPhone can. Android's openness only adds a few extra features, I find the quality of the apps on iOS adds more features that could be gained by being 'open'.
http://www.good.com/news/articles.php
A list of Articles from the Good web site covering the last couple of years. Note that in almost every article iOS is touted above all else regardless of what actual real world activations are. Interesting how in the same announcement in Jan 2011 Windows Mobile accounts for 5% of activations in their graph, yet in the 2012 one they are absent completely. The WinPhone footprint did increase slightly in 2011 so where are they in the new graph?
These numbers cannot be considered as objective.
This article from the Reg in 20 October uses Good supplied figures. See any discrepancies???
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/10/20/good_figures/
"Hardly surprising! These business types are getting their iphone paid for by their employer, in the mistaken belief that the iPhone gives them some form of status."
Bitter - get a job then?
Many people pick an iPhone for reasons other than status. Some people would not pick an Android as it runs Google's software - it's about choice as well.
"A list of Articles from the Good web site covering the last couple of years. Note that in almost every article iOS is touted above all else regardless of what actual real world activations are."
Maybe it's also that home users are more cost conscious so buy cheaper handsets (often Android) but would not need Good's service and that business users do.
All they are saying is that a LOT more IOS devices signed up for their service - they are not saying Android is cr@p - but Androidies are very sensitive...
"The only impression you'll give is that you’re unable to grasp anything other than 'easy'. After all iOS is as easy as fisher price."
Does making a more difficult phone OS make it better? Most people want a device to be easy to use - but if you like driving around in reverse with the handbrake on - you do it. A lot of techies on here seem to lose sight of what 'other' people want - you may want a device that you can re-rom but 95%+ of people do not.
This is the second Reg article this week that seems to infer something about device usage from the ratio of activations - and it's not even clear here whether activations include new handsets on existing accounts. We know that many iPhone users upgrade every time a new device comes out whether the old one is still adequate or not whereas 'droid users don't (or they'd be upgrading every week). Perhaps the higher proportion of iPhone activations is simply because iPhone users lose or break theirs more often (and empirical evidence supports that).
I seem to remember mass android ejaculations when Rubin mention how many hundred thousand android devices were being activated each day. So no it's the turn of the iOS brethren to shoot their collective loads...
That said, you really have to wonder about the state of modern society: here we are losing sleep and raising our blood pressure over pieces of hardware. :))
"Perhaps the higher proportion of iPhone activations is simply because iPhone users lose or break theirs more often (and empirical evidence supports that)."
Did you actually look at the graph - if you were right iPhone users would be losing or breaking their devices weekly. There is a massive difference and the most likely conclusion (as stated) is that business users have a need for this service (most personal users would not) and of those users who need the Good service the VAST majority are using iPhones / other IOS devices.
I just have to hope all these organisations deploying GfE bothered to do their research first to find out how secure it really is. Thomas Cannon did some work under a project entitled Android Reversing ( http://thomascannon.net/projects/android-reversing/ ) where he demonstrates the "security" of GfE on Android.
I'd be interested to see some geographical data vs activations. I notice Good is a US based company.
For businesses - particularly those who travel, a GSM capable phone is essential and many workers will buy a cheap local sim to swap into their phones when abroad. The US only has 2 networks providing GSM capable phones (e.g. coming with data roaming contracts), the rest are limited CDMA and completely useless in most parts of the world.
I've been looking for a GSM Android phone and find that many of the high end one's end up being released CDMA only to specific networks in the US. Could it be that due to the iPhone's GSM capabilities and it's availability with both GSM and CDMA providers have an impact on those results at all?
As someone who recently agonized over the selection of tablets for our office, it came down to which was easier to implement. While I'm a big fan of Android, it's a PITA to implement in a corporate environment, at least in small-scale. If I want to lock down an Android device so that my users don't go accidentally giving away the farm, I have to get some third-party MDM solution. But with the iPad, I just download the free iPhone Configuration Utility and <clickety-click> it's ready to go, and I can get back to putting out fires.
That they don't allow Android on Good. We don't. Where I work if you have a blackberry you can get rid of it and instead be allowed to access your stuff via Good. At your own cost, no more subsidies, so it saves a lot of money. Android honestly is not ready for the big time and good can't change the fact that it's not secure enough as a platform for us (yet?). Not my opinion but that of our security team who apparently have made a career of such stuff.
If a corporate IT department sticks with currently-available Apple products they need support only three phone and two tablet models, all of which can run the latest version of iOS. The number of comparable Android devices seems to be in excess of one hundred. Many currently available Android devices "offer" one of two or three obsolete versions of the OS, and every manufacturer customizes the OS for each hardware configuration and/or each mobile phone company. Support for Apple products is relatively simple; support for Android products could be a nightmare.
Apple products can be easily locked down by IT departments; Android products not so easily.
When Apple revises iOS, all devices can be updated at the same time. Android updates, which are supplied by device manufacturers and/or mobile phone companies, can never be simultaneous. Further, it appears that a goodly number of Android suppliers have little or no interest in updating any of their devices.
Apple's "walled garden" of apps serves two important corporate purposes. 1.) The "curation" of apps and the fact that they are available only directly from Apple reduces the likelihood of malicious software. 2.) iOS apps offer little scope for network tampering or data theft or porn (other than "content") or other activities that might damage corporate interests.
As someone whose family's computers run two flavors of Windows and two of Linux, I am clearly not a fanboi of Apple products. Nonetheless, I have long thought that Apple's tight-fisted control of iOS was a deliberate and wise effort to win corporate sales. The figures cited in this article seem to support my speculation.
As veskebjorn said - for corporates they look at the cost of purchase and often more expensively support - Apple products are far less expensive to support as they work the same and the iPhone 3GS, 4 and 4s all run the same version of Lion - whereas 3 different Android handsets could run 3 different versions of Android.
More models / manufacturers makes warranty issues, spares and general support far more difficult and time consuming = expensive.