Adoption of Android tablets and smartphones in large businesses has been “severely limited” because of the complexities of managing the various Android models and versions, market research firm Gartner said in an evaluation of 20 mobile device management (MDM) software vendors released Friday.

A survey that Gartner conducted in April showed 58 percent of enterprises have or will make iOS, used in iPhones and iPads, their primary mobile platform in the next year, compared with 20 percent for BlackBerry and 9 percent for Android.

Google offers “weaker management support” for Android than Apple for iOS or Research in Motion for BlackBerry, Gartner added in its new 34-page study.

The broad-ranging study said the explosion in consumer smartphones and tablets used in workplaces is making MDM the “fastest-growing enterprise mobile software ever in terms of number of suppliers, revenue growth and interest from Gartner clients.”

Mobile Movement

MDM license revenues were about $200 million in 2010 and $350 million in 2011, and are expected to reach $500 million in 2012, Gartner said. Research firm IDC recently said the revenues were higher in 2010, at $300 million, and expects the market will reach $1.2 billion in 2015. A principal problem with Android management capabilities, Gartner said, is that Google hasn’t opened many application programming interfaces (APIs) for the dozens of MDM vendors to connect their various management tools to Android, Gartner said. In Android 4.0, Google only provided 16 APIs, compared to more than 500 APIs for the latest version of BlackBerry.

Some MDM vendors have built their own APIs for Android devices, but the process “is time-consuming and expensive to do for each device and version of Android,” Gartner said. “This [problem] has severely limited Android adoption in the enterprise, and even today, very few enterprises provide [Android] support.”

Google didn’t respond to a request to comment. However, Android vendors such as Motorola Mobility — which Google is acquiring — have defended the security and management available in Android for enterprise uses, mainly through software from 3LM, a software vendor that Motorola acquired in 2011.

Christy Wyatt, general manager of Motorola Mobility’s enterprise business unit, commented in January: “We have to get Android as a whole at a stable and secure place, and once Android is behind the firewall [with 3LM], that helps. There’s a lot of mythology around Android and whether it’s secure or not.” Other Android device makers, such as HTC and Sony, have struck agreements to license 3LM software, she said at the time.

Gartner’s report noted that Google hasn’t disclosed what it plans to do with 3LM as part of Motorola, adding that enterprises Gartner works with are hoping Google will use 3LM as part of an enterprise version of Android for device makers.

Earlier in May, 3LM announced version 3.0 of its Mobile Device and Application Management platform to handle smartphones and tablets running Android 4.0, as well as manage iPhones and iPads. Other new features including an easier interface for IT managers and tools to prevent users from copying data from corporate apps to non-corporate apps.

Security Concerns

Gartner didn’t rank 3LM in its latest review of 20 MDM vendors because it doesn’t consider 3LM a true MDM vendor. Gartner analyst Phillip Redman, one of three authors of the latest report, said in an e-mail interview that 3LM builds APIs and doesn’t provide actual MDM, adding that those APIs serve as a “layer between MDM and a mobile device.”

Claims that Android is broadly secure are “not true,” Redman added. “All Android is not created equally.” He didn’t elaborate.

The presence of BlackBerry smartphones, which have been widely regarded as secure and manageable through its BlackBerry Enterprise Server, are on the decline in enterprises. RIM in April released an MDM platform, Mobile Fusion, that provides management for iOS and Android as well as BlackBerry. Gartner didn’t evaluate Mobile Fusion for its report because it is too early, but said the software “could be a force if [RIM] decides to invest more in this area.”

Of the 20 MDM vendors that Gartner studied, it ranked these five as leaders: MobileIron, AirWatch, Fiberlink, Zenprise and Good Technologies. SAP and Symantec were listed as “challengers,” while BoxTone and IBM were described as “visionaries.”

The other 11 MDM vendors were called “niche players” and included: McAfee, Sophos, Soti, Trend Micro, Tangoe, OpenPeak, Silverback MDM, Amtel, Landesk, Smith Micro Software and MyMobile Security.

In all, there are probably more than 100 vendors globally that offer some form of MDM, Gartner said. To qualify for the group of 20, the MDM vendors had to have a well-rounded set of mobile management tools. For security management, each of the 20 had to have, at least, IT tools for these services: Enforce a password; wipe a device of data; remotely lock a device; create an audit trail for logging in of a device, including verifying device configuration from a central console; ability to detect jailbreaks and rooting; and support for at least three mobile OS platforms. Security components also include support for antivirus software, encryption, firewalls and mobile VPNs.

Other requirements included tools to block use of flash cards or other external storage, and tools to audit changes made on the hardware. For software, the 20 MDM vendors had to support the ability to push or pull apps on a device and to verify the origin of the mobile app. The software also had to support app updates, patches and an enterprise and third-party app store.

All 20 MDM vendors in the Gartner group had to have at least $1.5 million in MDM-specific revenue. The average price for MDM software is about $60 per user per year, Gartner said, a price that should drop to $40 per user per year by 2015 as more cloud-based MDM systems emerge.

Matt Hamblen covers mobile and wireless, smartphones and other handhelds, and wireless networking for Computerworld. Follow Matt on Twitter at @matthamblen or subscribe to Matt’s RSS feed. His e-mail address is mhamblen@computerworld.com.

See more by Matt Hamblen on Computerworld.com.

Read more about mobile and wireless in Computerworld’s Mobile and Wireless Topic Center.

Article source: http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/255810/google_lack_of_support_hampers_android_analyst_says.html

Sony must stay on top of Android updates for its tablets to remain relevant to consumers.

(Credit:
Sony)

One must wonder why Sony cannot get out of the habit of playing a fragmented and behind-the-curve
Android release schedule for its devices.

Finally putting speculation to rest, a Sony representative confirmed with Crave today (and subsequently on Twitter) that Sony
tablet owners in “all regions will have Android 4.0 by end of May.” And on a related note, a Sony Japan statement announced a May 24 drop date for Android 4.0 landing on both Tablet S and Tablet P devices specifically in that country, perhaps a timeframe we should expect elsewhere.

To recap, see if you can keep up with this:

Currently, Sony offers Android 4.0 software for the Tablet S in the U.S. (since April), while Europe, Japan and other countries only have official access to Android 3.2.1 for both the Tablet P and the Tablet S. You read that correctly — Sony’s home country and Europe still pick away at Honeycomb while Americans enjoy Ice Cream Sandwich.

Sony Tablet P looks great from all angles (photos)

Up until now, the timetable for the arrival time of the Android 4.0 update for Sony’s tablets remained a mystery in some ways. Sony gave Android 4.0 to U.S. owners of the Tablet S for a considerable amount of time before any other region.

The level of frustration emanating from European Sony tablet owners seems at an all-time high. One discussion topic at the Sony Europe forums contains many lengthy replies from disappointed Sony tablet owners, including those who resorted to hackers for the update instead. “I have a 16Gb Tab S, rooted and ICS courtesy of Condi from XDA – who is much more helpful and responsive than $ony,” said forum user praed0r.

Do you think Sony’s continued failure to quickly deploy Android updates burns consumers from repurchasing into the brand? You may recall the now-defunct Sony Ericsson took an extraordinary amount of time to deliver its Android updates back in the Xperia X10 era, so repeating this course of action seems extremely foolish.

Sony Tablet S (photos)

Article source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57437442-1/sony-comes-clean-on-worldwide-android-4.0-tablet-update/?part=rss&subj=crave&tag=title

In giving the thumbs-up to Google’s acquisition of Motorola, regulators in China stipulated that Google must make
Android free and open for five years, a source with knowledge of the situation confirmed with CNET today.

The stipulation would seem to be designed to keep Google from denying Motorola’s handset competitors access to the mobile operating system, or from giving Motorola an advantage of some sort — such as integration between its handsets and Android that’s tighter than connections between rival phones and the OS.

From the beginning, Google has taken an open approach with Android, making it free and available to any hardware manufacturer — a strategy that’s helped to quickly make Android the No. 1 mobile OS globally.

“Many hardware partners have contributed to Android’s success and we look forward to continuing our work with all of them on an equal basis to deliver outstanding user experiences,” Google CEO Larry Page said during a conference call last August, at the time the intended acquisition was announced. “We built Android as an open-source platform and it will stay that way.”

Still, despite the offering of such olive branches, and despite Android’s great success as an open OS, Motorola rivals may well have been nervous. “Any way (Google) tries to couch this, there’s no doubt Motorola is the most favored player,” Gartner analyst Michael Gartenberg told CNET’s Roger Cheng in August. “If I’m a third-party vendor, I have some real concerns here.”

That’s in part because it could have at least crossed Google’s mind to integrate its software and services more tightly with the Motorola hardware, following Apple’s end-to-end approach with its own hardware and services.

Apple uses the sale of its iPhones and iPads to drive sales of iTunes, the App store, iCloud, and other offerings. Google, of course, has its own services — Google Drive, Google+, and so on — and a Google-focused Android device could further push subscribers to them. Ultimately, it’s these services that are the money-makers for Google. Fragmentation of Android is another concern, and a dominant, tightly integrated Android handset might help to address that.

What, then, would rival phone makers do? There aren’t many alternatives to Android. Windows Phone might become a more attractive option, but then, Microsoft has a cozy relationship with Nokia, so it could be deja vu all over again. Here’s what CNET’s Maggie Reardon had to say back in August, in a discussion of the merger’s possible impact on consumers:

What is likely to happen is that HTC, LG, Sony Ericsson, and Samsung will remain Android partners, but they may have to find new ways to differentiate their products from Motorola’s more Google-centric hardware. This may mean that HTC offers more advancements for its Sense software, which rides on top of the Android software. And Samsung may develop more TouchWiz customizations.

For consumers this could either be a good thing or a bad thing. If executed well, it will offer consumers more variety in device capabilities as well as look and feel. But if it’s not executed well, it could just mean more fragmentation in the Android ecosystem.

Reardon also wrote that the merger would probably lead to more-advanced devices from Google, a good thing for consumers.

With the stipulation from China’s regulators (which was reported earlier today by several media outlets), all this may have become moot. And if Google is to be believed, it may not have been an issue anyway.

A company representative told CNET today that Google’s “stance since we agreed to acquire Motorola has not changed and we look forward to closing the deal.”

So, had it crossed Google’s mind to tie Android tightly to Motorola handsets? We might have to wait five years to find out. And who knows what the landscape will look like then?

We have an e-mail out to Motorola for comment and will update this post if we hear back.

Article source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-32969_3-57437774-300/china-to-google-android-must-remain-open/?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=

Computerworld -

Adoption of Android tablets and smartphones in large businesses has been “severely limited” because of the complexities of managing the wide variety of Android-based devices and versions of the operating system, research firm Gartner said in an evaluation of 20 mobile device management (MDM) software vendors released Friday.

In a survey conducted in April, Gartner found that 58% of enterprises have made or plan to make Apple’s iOS their primary mobile platform in the next year. In comparison, 20% of enterprises will standardize on RIM’s BlackBerry platform and 9% will choose Google’s Android.

Google offers “weaker management support” for Android than Apple does for iOS or Research In Motion does for BlackBerry, Gartner added in its new 34-page study.

The broad-ranging study said the explosion in consumer smartphones and tablets used in workplaces is making MDM the “fastest-growing enterprise mobile software ever in terms of number of suppliers, revenue growth and interest from Gartner clients.”

MDM license revenues were about $200 million in 2010 and $350 million in 2011, and are expected to reach $500 million in 2012, Gartner said. Research firm IDC recently pegged 2010 MDM revenues at a higher level, $300 million, and it expects the market will reach $1.2 billion in 2015.

A big part of the reason why it’s difficult to manage Android systems, Gartner said, is that Google hasn’t opened many application programming interfaces (API) to the dozens of MDM vendors, which means they can’t connect their management tools to Android. In Android 4.0, Google only provided 16 APIs, compared to more than 500 APIs for the latest version of BlackBerry.

Some MDM vendors have built their own APIs for Android devices, but that process “is time-consuming and expensive to do for each device and version of Android,” Gartner said. “This [problem] has severely limited Android adoption in the enterprise, and even today, very few enterprises provide [Android] support.”

Google didn’t respond to a request for comment about Gartner’s report. However, Android vendors such as Motorola Mobility — which Google is acquiring — have defended the security and management features in Android for enterprise use. Those capabilities are mainly available through software from 3LM, a software vendor that Motorola acquired in 2011.

In January, Christy Wyatt, general manager of Motorola Mobility’s enterprise business unit, said: “We have to get Android as a whole at a stable and secure place, and once Android is behind the firewall [with 3LM], that helps. There’s a lot of mythology around Android and whether it’s secure or not.”

Other Android device makers, such as HTC and Sony, have struck agreements to license 3LM software, she said at the time.

Gartner’s report noted that Google hasn’t disclosed what it plans to do with 3LM as part of Motorola, adding that enterprises Gartner works with are hoping Google will use 3LM as part of an enterprise version of Android for device makers.

Earlier in May, 3LM announced Version 3.0 of its Mobile Device and Application Management platform for handling smartphones and tablets that run Android 4.0, as well as managing iPhones and iPads. Other new features include an easier interface for IT managers and tools to prevent users from copying data from corporate systems to noncorporate systems.

Gartner didn’t rank 3LM in its latest review of 20 MDM vendors because it doesn’t consider 3LM a true MDM vendor. Gartner analyst Phillip Redman, one of three authors of the report, said in an email interview that 3LM builds APIs and doesn’t provide actual MDM capabilities, and he added that those APIs serve as a “layer between MDM and a mobile device.”

Claims that Android is broadly secure are “not true,” Redman added. “All Android is not created equally.” He didn’t elaborate.

Enterprise use of BlackBerry smartphones, which have been widely regarded as secure and manageable through RIM’s BlackBerry Enterprise Server, is on the decline. In April, RIM released an MDM platform called Mobile Fusion that provides management for iOS and Android as well as BlackBerry. Gartner didn’t evaluate Mobile Fusion for its report because it’s too new. But the research firm did say that the software “could be a force if [RIM] decides to invest more in this area.”

Of the 20 MDM vendors that Gartner studied, it ranked these five as leaders: MobileIron, AirWatch, Fiberlink, Zenprise and Good Technologies. SAP and Symantec were listed as “challengers,” while BoxTone and IBM were described as “visionaries.”

Gartner described the other 11 MDM vendors it studied as “niche players.” They are McAfee, Sophos, Soti, Trend Micro, Tangoe, OpenPeak, Silverback MDM, Amtel, Landesk, Smith Micro Software and MyMobile Security.

In all, there are probably more than 100 vendors globally that offer some form of MDM capability, Gartner said. To qualify for the group of 20, the MDM vendors had to have a well-rounded set of mobile management tools. For security management, each of the 20 had to have IT tools that were capable of the following: enforcing passwords; wiping data off of a device; remotely locking a device; creating an audit trail for logging in of a device and verifying a device’s configuration from a central console; and detecting jailbreaks and rooting. They also had to support at least three mobile operating systems. Other required security components included support for antivirus software, encryption, firewalls and mobile VPNs.

Other requirements included tools to block use of flash cards or other external storage media, and tools to audit changes made on the hardware. For software, the 20 MDM vendors had to support the ability to push or pull apps on a device and to verify the origin of mobile apps. The software also had to support app updates, patches and an enterprise and third-party app store.

All 20 MDM vendors in the Gartner group had to have MDM-specific revenue of at least $1.5 million. The average price for MDM software is about $60 per user per year, Gartner said, and that price should drop to $40 per user per year by 2015 as more cloud-based MDM systems emerge.

Matt Hamblen covers mobile and wireless, smartphones and other handhelds, and wireless networking for Computerworld. Follow Matt on Twitter at @matthamblen, or subscribe to Matt’s RSS feed. His email address is mhamblen@computerworld.com.

See more by Matt Hamblen on Computerworld.com.

More at our Android page

Read more about Mobile and Wireless in Computerworld’s Mobile and Wireless Topic Center.

Article source: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9227282/Android_in_enterprises_severely_limited_by_weak_management_support_from_Google

In Silicon Valley, where sudden wealth is hardly something new and CEOs favor hoodies over bespoke blazers, Facebook’s IPO on Friday didn’t bring everyday life to a halt.

Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/improve-android-home-screen-app-video-174849031.html

First quarter numbers from IDC showed that Android tablet shipments declined in Q1-12 from Q4-11, while Apple cruised ahead, reasserting dominance of the tablet market. Looking a bit deeper, we see that Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablet, a deviation from Google Android, is becoming dominant, and all the tablets from Samsung, Moto/Google, and other mainstream CE and PC manufacturers are losing share. This looks like a disaster for Android.

Android Tablet Market Share: Dec-11 to Feb-12; Data via Comscore.

It is a disaster for Google’s Android tablet strategy, which seems to boil down to producing a better product with much the same value proposition as Apple’s iPad. The high-end Android tablets that are positioned right against the iPad (Moto Xoom, Samsung GalaxyTablet) are losing ground. Asus, Acer, and Toshiba, which have more of a value strategy, are hanging on. The others have failed to make a mark.

However, Amazon has created a whole new market with the Kindle: defined by simpler hardware and software, $200 price point, and linkage to the Amazon content platform and brand.

There’s more to this market than the Comscore numbers show, because Comscore does not consider Barnes Noble’s Nook to be a tablet, although it’s functionality is similar to the Kindle. Other sources indicate that Nook sales are a large fraction of Kindle sales.

And, the lower-priced market is seasonal (more of a gift market) than the iPad. Analysts expected a Q1 dip in sales; it does not indicate that the category is going away.

Most important, there is a wave of competing tablets coming at the sub-$200 price point. Amazon has shown that there is demand for this class of product. The open source code for Android 4.x (Ice Cream Sandwich) was released in late 2011. OEMs are working hard to launch new sub-$200 products based on the new OS. This produced a pause in Q1 and Q2 but will bring forth a surge of new offerings in the summer. A new wave of Chinese ODMs and CPU chip companies are entering the market with cost structures that are lower than the Taiwanese and Korean OEMs and ODMs who produce the bulk of products in the market today. They will offer products that retailers can sell well below $200 with a normal margin.

And, Amazon has created an app store and content services that many of these products will use. Amazon is, after all, primarily a content company; the Kindle is a platform for selling content. Google/Android has limited access to its content platform (“GMS” = Google Mobile Services) to a select few OEMs, the ones losing share in the chart above, in its attempt to raise the quality of Android products and directly attack Apple. This held the second tier Android OEMs back, until now.

I’m disappointed that Android tablets are not having more success in the enterprise. I expected that the highly functional and open Android OS would attract developers to build enterprise applications. This has not happened yet, and Apple has done a great job in this segment.

But, don’t count Android tablets out. A wave of new, lower-priced products are coming for the fall selling season, and the game in the enterprise is far from over.

Article source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/toddhixon/2012/05/18/are-android-tablets-dead/?feed=rss_home