iPhone 6 already driving iOS enterprise share gains for Apple

Enterprise mobile services vendor Good Technology reports that Apple's iPhone 6 launch helped the company win back mobile device enterprise share from Android, boosting iOS to 69 percent of all device activations as firms' deployment of custom mobile apps continues to grow exponentially.

Apple's iPhone 6 and 6 Plus were only available during the last two weeks of the quarter, but drove a reversal of share loss at the expense of all Android licensees' products combined. Microsoft's Windows Phone remained static with the same 1 percent of share among Good's enterprise users. Apple completely reversed the trend toward Android in smartphones— Android phones had gained 4 percentage points in the June quarter, but lost 1 in the September quarter

Among tablets, Android notched a one percentage point gain in activations, leaving Apple's iPad with 89 percent of all enterprise tablet activations in the September quarter.

Overall, Good reports that iOS now accounts for 69 percent of all mobile device activations, compared to 29 percent for Android and 1 percent for both Windows Phone and everything else. Compared to the previous quarter, Android dropped by 1 percentage point overall, a move Good blamed on iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. iOS had accounted for 67 percent of all mobile activations in the June quarter.

Good reported that iPhone 6 represented 17 percent of all activations on its own, and greatly outnumbered activations of the larger iPhone 6 Plus among its enterprise users. The firm stated that the 4.7 inch model made up 85 percent of the new iPhone mix it activated within the quarter, while the 5.5 inch 6 Plus represented the remaining 15 percent.

Apple completely reversed the trend toward Android in smartphones— Android phones had gained 4 percentage points in the June quarter, but lost 1 in the September quarter. In tablets, Android's growth also slowed down; after gaining 2 percentage points in the summer, all tablets using Android gained only one percentage point in September.

At the current rate, it would take Android another ten years to catch up to Apple in tablet share. However, major tablet vendors outside of Apple are currently struggling with shipment growth even with promotional pricing and giveaways that make tablet production a profitless business.

Good to compete with IBM for more iOS activations

Good provides push messaging, device management and security products for corporate mobile users, serving as an alternative to BlackBerry Enterprise Server as well as other Mobile Device Management platforms including MaaS360, which was acquired by IBM last fall.

In addition to noting device statistics, Good also highlighted dramatic growth in new custom app activations, reporting an increase of 107% quarter-over-quarter and 731% year-over-year.

The company pointed out that custom apps accounted for 28 percent of all mobile app activations, leading third party document editing apps (like Microsoft Office) and document access apps (including Dropbox), as well as the fourth and fifth most popular app categories of secure browser and secure IM client apps.

This summer, Apple and IBM announced a partnership to develop scores of new apps targeting "Mobile First" workflows for a series of industries. Leveraging Apple's new Swift programming language, the two are expected to release their first iPad apps for businesses this month.

Apple's iPad has already begun to disrupt how business is done, having the most significant impact on conventional PCs. New tablet apps are poised to accelerate that shift.

In an Apple earnings conference call this summer, chief executive Tim Cook stated, "we've forged a relationship with IBM to deliver a new class of mobile business solutions to enterprise customers around the world. We're working together to provide companies access to the power of big data analytics right on every employee's iPhone or iPad.

"Using Swift, we will collaborate to bring over 100 MobileFirst apps to enterprise clients, each addressing a specific industry need or opportunity. This is a radical step for enterprise. It opens a large market opportunity for Apple," Cook emphasized. "But more importantly, it's great for productivity and creativity of our enterprise customers."