Verizon helps spike iPhone adoption at work as Android drops

A new Good Technology study on Friday revealed that the Verizon iPhone may have given iOS a jump in use in the enterprise. iOS averaged 70 percent of activations in thousands of companies during the winter, which Good credited not only to having the second carrier choice but to the $49 iPhone 3GS at AT&T. The growth pushed Android down to 30 percent of all new devices on Good's service from 35 percent just in the fall.

Google had a larger portion of phone-only activations at 38 percent to Apple's 62 percent. Apple had a wide lead among individual devices, however, with the GSM iPhone 4 and its Verizon equivalent leading the group followed by both generations of iPad and the old iPhone 3GS and 3G models. Android was led by Motorola's Droid X and Droid 2 Global along with the HTC Evo 4G and Thunderbolt.

Android tablets were just one percent of all activation types and led primarily by the Motorola Xoom. Tablets as a whole stayed at about a fifth of all activations.

The study gave an opportunity to show where devices were most often being activated. Banks, investor firms and similar financial firms were the leaders at about 29 percent of the ultimate destinations regardless of what device was being used. The iPad represented much more of the new devices, though, and represented about 43 percent of Apple's tablet adoption. Health care also moved up in importance compared to the overall group.

Good saw the iPad usually being rolled out as an extra device rather than a full computer replacement, but certain areas saw the it as functional enough to replace a computer outright. Unlike phones, which were often personal devices just being given official support, iPads were more often being bought as company gear and rolled out more aggressively as true systems.

"Key use cases for the iPad in finance and health care center on deployment as a potential laptop alternative for users who are heavy content consumers and/or presenters, but not heavy content creators," Good said. "We are [also] seeing deployment in hospital settings as a replacement for 'computer on wheels' and legacy tablet form factors."

Although not a complete study, Good's figures roughly correlate with those shown by Apple, where 75 percent of the Fortune 500 was either testing or actively using iPads, and 80 percent were doing the same with iPhones.

Electronista