Enterprise Smartphone Competition Heats Up

The smartphone market is changing at an incredible rate. Learn which phones are best for the enterprise, and what the future holds as Apple, Android and others set their sights on the lucrative business market.

Determining the best smartphone for the enterprise has prompted little debate, until
recently. For years, BlackBerry has owned the North American enterprise smartphone/mobile
messaging market. While BlackBerry still has a firm grip on the market, that grip is
loosening. Apple with its iPhone is turning its attention to the enterprise, while the
Android smartphone looms on the horizon.

Other smartphone options – Symbian
(a leading platform overseas, an afterthought in North America) and Palm (where do I even begin with its
problems?) – have done little to woo enterprise users. Still other platforms, such as
LiMo (Linux Mobile), Nokia-driven Maemo and Samsung-sponsored bada have their proponents, but
few are in the North American (N. A.) enterprise market.

As of Q1 2010, BlackBerry owned 42.1 percent of the N.A. smartphone market, according to comScore MobiLens, well ahead of Apple at 25.4 percent and
Microsoft at 15.1 percent. Google and Palm came in at 9 and 5.4 percent, respectively;
however, Palm’s share represented a 1.8 percent drop (on the heels of a 2.2 percent drop
from Q3 2009), while Google’s translated into a 5.2 percent gain.

Read “Best Smartphone for the Enterprise: Evaluating the Contenders” at Datamation