I feel like there really only one primary cause of iOS's (unexpected) enterprise success: it's a prestige phone.
We can wax poetic about the democratization of corporate IT processes, or specific technologies, but IMO those are all herrings, or minor causes at best.
At the end of the day, Apple introduced an incredibly prestigious product at the very highest end of the market. It had cachet and desirability, and when your SVP buys that drool-worthy envy-of-the-office phone, he damn well wants to use it with his email, and damned what IT thinks of it.
I suspect Android's success in the enterprise space hinges on a similar product - if someone can come up with the "oh my god I must have it" phone in Android-land, the enterprise support will follow.
I disagree. They are the best product, without a big price premium.
We have a strong preference for Verizon at my place, due to the geography of our operating area vs. coverage. We have about 5,000 devices, and we started introducing Android to replace Blackberries. It didn't go well -- more support calls, a pain to manage, and very inconsistent. If we issued users a phone that the vendor decided to not support, users were not happy.
The iPhones just work. Users love them. Our guys have minimal support load, etc. The biggest problem is that people keep trying to do new things, so there's some chaos with apps, etc.
None of that rules out the iPhone status symbol angle.
What the "best product" is, is so completely subjective and since when did that matter anyway? You probably think that Macs are the best computer...why aren't those the biggest in the enterprise space?
The BlackBerry was also a "status symbol" for a long time. Big whoop.
In the enterprise space, BlackBerry was the "best product" because it was manageable, easy to configure, easy to encrypt and reliable for it's purpose -- making phone calls and email.
As the iPhone and Android devices became popular, users started expecting a rich web and app experience that BlackBerry just couldn't deliver -- but IT guys like me still pushed BlackBerries, because the new devices weren't managable.
Then, that changed. iPhones can be managed, encrypted, etc by an IT department with little fuss. Androids can be too, but it's more complex -- I need to buy a 3rd party app to encrypt email, and keep up with the various features of 8 different vendors and 30 different phones. So, if I buy Android devices, I need to deal with the carnival of device choices that confuses users and increases the likelihood that my people will screw something up. Or I can buy an iPhone, which costs the same or less than the Android deivce, and everyone is happy.
Sounds like the "best" choice to me.
RE: The Mac -- I am a Mac user personally, but wouldn't buy them in a medium or large business. Why? Three reasons: Macs don't have a mature (where mature == working) integration with authentication and authorization services (ie. AD or LDAP/Kerberos). Apple is a single-source, mercurial supplier. All business apps work on Windows -- 10% work on Mac.
> Macs ...why aren't those the biggest in the enterprise space?
Rhetorical question, but here's the actual answer:
None of the reasons that had hindered Macs on the uss-enterprise apply to iPhones. It's compatible with common network and mail systems, there's management software, it has the biggest application & developer base, and the (huge) profit margins are hidden in the carrier bills.
Unless you want to surprise me with a link to some high quality research about ease of use and enjoyment of smartphones, I don't think that is any sort of fact.
You'll find plenty of users who think otherwise and it is not worth the time to argue over which bit of anecdotal evidence or which opinion is correct.
What do you mean exactly when you say that the iPhone "is a prestige phone", that it is "at the very highest end of the market", and you use this to explain the iPhone's popularity? Do you mean:
1. It's the most expensive smartphone?
2. It's the smartphone with the highest specs?
3. It's the most popular smartphone? (which would be a tautology... it's popular because it's popular)
"Desirability" and "cachet" are outcomes, not first causes. To what cause are you ascribing the iPhone's success?
IMO, it's more Apple Incorporated's prestige driving executive sales rather than simply the products themselves. Business people respect things like stock prices and profit reports, and ever since Apple rose to being the largest tech company, there's been a certain mentality that "they make the most money so they must be doing it right". (It actually reminds me a lot of the adulation of Microsoft in the late 1990s.)
And from an IT standpoint, Android sounds like a bit of mess due to uneven support from different vendors. Obviously there's ways to work around that, but Apple may not necessarily be the worst "enterprise" choice.
In my experience that's pretty much the exact opposite of how enterprise IT works. That's why we tend to end up with so much miserable hardware/software. It's usually a calculation of cost/technical adequacy/ease-of-support. User preference or usability in general is not a big concern. Many companies have only recently begun to replace BlackBerries on a large scale. If you were correct we would have seen huge adoption of the iPhone 3G in the enterprise 4 years ago or maybe the iPhone 3GS 3 years ago. It's a trend that has really picked up only in the last 2 years or so on a large scale.
We have an IT company that is outsourced to handle all this stuff for us and they only deploy iPhones. They recommend replacing BB/Android devices via forklift upgrade. They actively do not support Android. If you're using anything other than BB/iPhone you're on your own. This is just one company out of probably thousands that provide similar services so maybe it's not a common policy. It was pretty sobering to me though. It reminds me of the Mac in the enterprise in years past. If you somehow managed to sneak one in the backdoor you wouldn't actually be allowed to use it. If this is becoming a common policy for Android devices then Google has a huge uphill battle. These types of companies aren't going to be re-evaluating their policies very often.
No one, not even Google, the carrier or the manufacturer can guarantee if you'll be able to install a security update on that Android phone you deployed to 2,000 sales people 6 months ago.
One of Apple's claimed differentiators is that they're a vertical operation. I'm confident an Apple rep would say that the iPhone was a prestige product because Apple produced both the hardware and software; that the "cachet and desirability" of their products are a direct result of a single editorial voice.
I haven't used any Android-based phones, so I can't say whether or not existing offerings match the fit and polish of an iPhone. Judging by your own comments, I will assume that none currently do, which makes me ponder a few questions.
Question One: If an Android-based phone were to achieve a level of integration between hardware and software comparable to the iPhone, would that put the lie to Apple's claims that keeping everything under one roof is their recipe for success? Or would a hardware manufacturer have to "own" the operating system for this to occur? Will Amazon eventually achieve Apple-like user satisfaction with the Kindle Fire because they forked Android?
Question Two: Is Jony Ive really as talented as the business press claims? Is he - or, more generally, is superior industrial design - Apple's secret weapon?
Question Three: Assuming question two is true, is Ive's level of design talent really that rare, that Samsung, HTC, Amazon, or Motorola cannot find an individual with competing skill?
Question Four: (Again assuming Ive's talent is a significant differentiator) Given that Ive was marking time, unrecognized and unappreciated, within Apple until Jobs' return, is it likely that a company requires a (hopefully benevolent) Dictator For Life in order to achieve the greatness that so often eludes decision-by-committee? Are there examples of best-of-breed products (in a similar or related industry) produced antithetically to Apple's methodology?
This was probably modded down for hyperbole, but if you look at any enterprise IT publication, it's full of news like "Symantac announces anti-virus solution for Android! blah blah Chinese app store blah".
I can imagine the average IT manager rubbing his temples and taking this sort of doubt, uncertainty, and fear seriously.
We can wax poetic about the democratization of corporate IT processes, or specific technologies, but IMO those are all herrings, or minor causes at best.
At the end of the day, Apple introduced an incredibly prestigious product at the very highest end of the market. It had cachet and desirability, and when your SVP buys that drool-worthy envy-of-the-office phone, he damn well wants to use it with his email, and damned what IT thinks of it.
I suspect Android's success in the enterprise space hinges on a similar product - if someone can come up with the "oh my god I must have it" phone in Android-land, the enterprise support will follow.