Android tops BlackBerry among enterprise users, says one study
Android saw the highest usage--40 percent--on Zscaler's cloud-based security network in the third quarter, surpassing BlackBerry's 37 percent and 22 percent for iOS.
Android has taken the lead among business users, at least according to the latest State of the Web report from cloud security provider Zscaler.
Among the three top mobile platforms, Android captured 40 percent of all mobile transactions seen by Zscaler on its network during the third quarter. That marked a healthy gain from the second quarter when Android captured just 17 percent. In comparison, RIM's BlackBerry accounted for 37 percent, while Apple's iOS took home just 22 percent.
Those percentages are derived from the Web traffic generated from millions of business users around the world who access Zscaler's online security, according to the company. Both mobile device usage and mobile device transactions continued to surge over the last quarter. But Android saw the biggest worldwide gains as Zscaler tracked an increase in mobile use outside the U.S.
"As mobile transactions from our enterprise customers continue to grow, we notice that the Android platform accounts for the largest and geographically dispersed user-population," the report said. "As well, it represents the mobile platform with the highest number of transactions through our cloud.
Apple's iOS, which fell to third place over the quarter, lost about half of its global share from the second quarter when it accounted for 42 percent of all transactions. In the U.S., however, both iOS and BlackBerry proved more popular than Android, with both grabbing a slightly higher percentage of users.
Social networking was the most common type of Web site category visited by business workers through their mobile devices. But corporate marketing, professional services, web search, and news sites were tops in terms of overall enterprise Web surfing.
Internet Explorer remained the dominant browser among the corporate crowd with a 53 percent share. But more users continued to jump ship to the competition. Firefox accounted for 10 percent of all transactions. And Safari grabbed 7 percent thanks to the increasing adoption of Apple devices in the enterprise.
More specifically, IE version 8 proved most popular with a 28 percent share, followed by version 7 with 22 percent. Use of Internet Explorer 9 is dragging, though, accounting for less than 2 percent of the traffic seen by Zscaler.