X

iOS ups lead over Android among business users, Citrix says

Apple's iOS is found on 58 percent of all mobile devices in the enterprise realm, according to a report from Citrix.

Lance Whitney Contributing Writer
Lance Whitney is a freelance technology writer and trainer and a former IT professional. He's written for Time, CNET, PCMag, and several other publications. He's the author of two tech books--one on Windows and another on LinkedIn.
See full bio
Lance Whitney
2 min read

iOS continues to be the preferred mobile platform in the business world, at least according to a recent report from Citrix.

Looking specifically at business customers who use its cloud-based management software, Citrix found that iOS was No. 1 with 58 percent adoption in last year's fourth quarter. Android took second place with a 35 percent share, followed by Window Mobile with only 7 percent. Among all deployed iOS devices using Citrix's sofware, iPads accounted for 53 percent and iPhones for 46 percent.

iOS actually showed a two-percentage point gain from the previous quarter, while Android's share dipped by two points. iOS remained dominant throughout the world. However, Android's share in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa shot up 11 points to 36 percent, while iOS's share fell 13 points to to 43 percent.

iOS was the most popular platform among businesses that deal with customers one-on-one, such as retail stores and restaurants. The biggest adopters of iOS proved to be energy companies, legal firms, and insurance agencies.

Android was tops with less customer-facing industries, such as communications services, health care, and transportation. But Android also saw increased adoption in the nonprofit and education markets.

Citrix

And what about BlackBerry, which used to be king of the corporate market?

A Citrix representative told CNET that the company does support BlackBerry. But collecting data on BlackBerry devices requires a special piece of software, which Citrix didn't leverage for this report. Citrix is considering whether to include BlackBerry data in future reports.

Companies concerned about their mobile users wasting too much time with non-business apps continued to blacklist certain ones. The top forbidden apps included Angry Birds, Facebook, Dropbox, YouTube, and Skype.

But other apps got the seal of approval from management. The most commonly whitelisted apps were Evernote, NitroDesk TouchDown, Skype, Chrome, and Adobe Reader. Skype was the only app to be both blacklisted and whitelisted.

Update, 10:15 a.m. PT: Adds information on why BlackBerry wasn't included.