Chalk up another mobile victory for Apple Inc.: Small- and medium-sized business owners “overwhelmingly prefer” its mobile devices to those running on Android and other technologies, according to a new report from Intermedia, which sells web-hosted e-mail, instant messaging and other services to business-to-business operators.
Its analysis of data from more than 60,000 of its customers shows that 68% of them activated devices using Apple’s iOs mobile operating system in 2014. That compares with 26% who use Google Inc.’s Android, 3% for Microsoft’s Windows, 1% for BlackBerry and about 1% for other or unknown. The findings come as Apple savors an strong first quarter for mobile: Sales of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus soared in the last quarter, reaching 74.5 million units; the quarterly number exceeded such recent full-year iPhone sales of 72.3 million in all of fiscal 2011.
“While the conventional wisdom is that Android has greater market share, Apple has accounted for approximately two-thirds of all mobile devices activated by Intermedia’s users for four years running,” says Michael Gold, president of Intermedia. “Many Intermedia customers use their smartphones and tablets as their primary business tools. Intermedia hopes this insight into SMB user preferences will help I.T. decision makers as they plan for future user productivity and system scalability.”
The Intermedia report also finds that:
• The launch of the iPhone 6/6 Plus was nearly 50% bigger on Intermedia’s network than the launch of the iPhone 5s/5c
• 76% of the users who activated the new iPhone chose the iPhone 6 over the iPhone 6 Plus
• The share of iPads among all devices activated on Intermedia’s network shrank from 16.2% in 2013 to 13.7% in 2014.
Apple is No. 2 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide.
Sign up for a free subscription to B2BecNews, a weekly newsletter that covers technology and business trends in the growing B2B e-commerce industry. B2BecNews is published by Vertical Web Media LLC, which also publishes the monthly trade magazine Internet Retailer.
Favorite