iPhone, iPad, and Android Make Enterprise Gains

We've already blogged about the iPhone and Android making inroads into the enterprise, but some recent data published by Microsoft Exchange hosting provider Intermedia indicates those devices -- and now the iPad -- are having even more success getting into the hands of business users. Intermedia manages more than 320,000 hosted Microsoft Exchange email accounts, and pulled data from those accounts about which smartphone platforms were being activated using Microsoft's ActiveSync technology. (Important note: RIM's popular Blackberry doesn't use Microsoft ActiveSync, so it was not included in Intermedia's report.)

Intermedia's data shows that 61% of their customers activated iPhones, 17% activated Android phones, and 22% fell into the "other" category, which Intermedia classifies as Windows, Palm, and Symbian. I've reached out to Intermedia to see what portion of the "Windows" amount may be Windows Phone 7 installs, and I'll update this data if new info becomes available. Intermedia points out that this data conflicts with widely-published reports about Android adoption in the enterprise outpacing the iPhone.

Perhaps more surprising is the growth in iPad adoption among Intermedia customers, with the company stating that 99.8 percent of tablet activations were iPads. Intermedia says that more than 900 iPads were activated in March 2011, and more than 1200 were activated in April 2011. Intermedia had previously seen iPad activations in the 300 per month range. The iPad seems to have found a niche in the enterprise, and an increasing number of iPad business and enterprise apps are finding their way onto the device.

Has your organization adopted the iPhone or iPad in large numbers? Let us know what you think of this trend by commenting on this blog post or following the discussion on Twitter.

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