2015/06/22 Business smartphones shipments in Q1 up 26% from last year, now 27% of total smartphone market

Boston, Mass. - June 8, 2015 — The worldwide market for business smartphones saw strong growth in Q1 2015, going 22.6% compared to Q1 2014. Business smartphones now account for 27% of the worldwide smartphone market, up from 26% the same quarter a year ago.

Shipments of personal-liable smartphones (i.e. “bring your own device,” or BYOD, phones) drove market growth in Q1; personal liable devices made up for over two thirds of all business smartphone shipments in the quarter. Strategy analytics defines personal libel devices as devices purchased by the end-user and expensed back to the company or organization, or devices purchased outright by individual users but used primarily for business purposes linking to corporate applications and backend systems. See more of the report here:  Global Business Smartphone Quarterly Tracking: Q1 2015

Regional variation on corporate/personal liable preferences

While personal liable devices dominate worldwide business smartphone shipments, some regions are more resistant to the BYOD trend than others. Such regions include Western Europe and Central Europe, where corporate-liable devices are the dominant types of business smartphones. In Western Europe in Q1, 61% of the 10 million business smart phones were corporate-liable. Central and Eastern Europe had a slightly higher rate of BYOD devices shipped in Q1 — 41% — but the majority of smartphones shipped in this regions was also corporate-liable. This a sharp contrast to North America, where three-quarters of business smartphone shipments are personal-liable. The trend in Western and Eastern Europe reflects the more corporate-centric approach businesses take to mobility in these regions.

Smartphone OS share varies by deployment model (CL vs. IL)

Android was the most dominant OS in terms of business smartphone shipments in Q1, accounting for nearly 60% of all business smartphones (corporate- and personal-liable). It was also the dominant BYOD device; 68% of personal-liable shipments in Q1 were Android. Apple iOS accounted for only 27% of BYOD shipments in Q1, but was the dominant platform in terms of corporate-liable smartphones, with 48% of Q1 CL shipments. The difference in Android/iOS shipments between the CL and IL categories reflects the continuing corporate perception that iPhones are “safer” than Android-based devices, says Phil Hochmuth, director of Mobile Workforce Strategies research at Strategy Analytics.

“Enterprises that want to maintain control and ownership of employees’ smartphones deploy iOS because of perceived security advantages over Android and strong support for iOS from business software and cloud providers,” Hochmuth says. “However, with the emergence of Android for Work and stronger support for Google’s platform across the enterprise ecosystem, we predict this perception gap will shrink among enterprise in the near future.”

Source:Strategy Analytics