subject: Ipad Application Development Facing Consistent Rise In Popularity Among Developers [print this page] Apple products enjoy an outstanding place in the marketplace. Be it the iPhone or iPad, Apple enjoys a distinctive clan of admirers and users who never fails to go gaga about any event that takes place from the mobile giant's part.
Recently there has been a survey conducted by the Information Week among 402 companies. According to the results, there are various hindrances that keeps Apple from a greater presence in enterprises , some significant are: 51% of respondents cited OS X and iOS versions of critical applications are absent; 36% cited they internally lack Apple expertise and interest in cultivating that knowledge; 34% cited the difficulty they face in integrating Apple users with Active Directory or other authentication systems; 27% said Macs and iOS devices are quite expensive; and 27% said Apple's devices are not that easy to manage centrally.
Apple has already released Apple Configurator recently to make easy the difficulty of Apple hardware administration. There are chances the new iPad might win some new corporate accounts: 7% of respondents stated because of Apples latest release they intend to increase their commitment to iPads and 4% said they now intend to support iPad app development. But in most cases survey takers were vigilant, 32% indicated that new iPad might be enough to re-evaluate iPad support and 34% indicated that they already support the iPad. Only 23% said Apples new iPad failed to impress them.
One of the major problems faced by regular iPad users is the lack of support for Adobe's software and limited corporate security options. According to another survey by the company earlier this year, IT professionals found that their rapidly growing interest for iOS devices is diminishing enthusiasm for RIMs Blackberry devices. While 70% of respondents reported to use Blackberry devices and 25% reported using Apple devices, that ratio strongly appears to oscillate away from Blackberry, toward iOS and Android hardware; which was not very good news for companies offering iPad application development. The expected smartphone purchases in their organization in next 24 months appears like this: 35% anticipated buying RIM devices, 45% has foreseen buying an Apple device, 25% identified Android, and only 6% expected of buying Windows 7 or 8 mobile devices.
Though RIM outnumbered Apple in areas where it has been strong traditionally, however, Apple soon gave a strong fight to its competitor in this faceoff. Some of these are:
Corporate systems
Ability to limit or exclude applications
Ability to encrypt data both at motion and at rest and centralized security and management
Quality of user experience
Provision of a common API
Feature quality
Support for personal and work activities on a single device
Running third-party applications
Running internally developed applications etc.
Apple has been rated way better by respondents and iPad app development had caught its pace. It can be summarized that the affinity for Apple products in the corporate world over decade has shown a sharp increase and it might be quite worrying for RIM in the future.
