It’s been a while since the last post, as well as from the survey. First of all I’d really like to thank everybody who participated! I promised to share the results, here you go: https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B1_jEMIq7JAnNmFQeWx3dW1qYUk
84% of the participants came from Germany, nearly 93% out of Europe.
42% of the participants still own and use a Personal Computer, Smartphones (27%) and Tablets (22%) are following while Netbooks are still being used with 7%.
While PCs are widly used, the most common OS still is Microsoft Windows with 59%, but Apple is also on the rise with 1/3. Ubuntu remains with only 6%, maybe this will change in the future since Dell announced to pre-ship Ultrabooks with Ubuntu in fall 2012.
Looking to the situation of smartphones, Apple is dominating with 2/3, Android is following with nearly 30%.
Tablets are also dominated by Apple with 62% and followed via Android with 22%. So 84% of the participants own a tablet.
Résumé: Apple is continuing to grow in the end user market segment for PCs due to domination in the smartphone and tablet market. Since BYOD projects will attract more and more enterprises, Apple will become an issue for them. I still believe that desktop virtualization could help out to solve the problem to deliver business critical applications to Apple users. It will also attract tablet users to get used with it although user experience is not that good due to missing gestures and desktop concepts like drag’n drop, right mouse clicks and exact pointing. But Windows 8 could solve most issues for desktop virtualization and usage on tablets or smartphones because it is exactly created for this. It would be great from an IT perspective not to rewrite legacy applications for new end user devices but deliver them to those end devices even if the primary OS is not based on Windows. I am aware of the concerns that nobody wants to use a Windows on an Apple device neither on an Android. But IT has the problem to provision business critical legacy applications to those new and fancy devices without having any budget to rewrite those applications in the Post-PC era. So I think it is definitly one solution to solve this issue. I personally believe that standard applications will be delivered via SaaS from the cloud in the short to mid future.
Any feedback or comments? Please let me know your thoughts.
Patrick Sauerwein | @virtual_patrick 
I agree about the app performance and lack of Windows-like usability on iOS and Android devices. But I have a basic question – what exact “corporate apps” are users trying to use on these devices? Is it just email? Or a few documents? Or is it some hard-core coding/debugging? What exactly are those “apps”? Would like to hear your perspective on this since I hear different answers from different people on this…
Hi Swarna,
Thank you very much for your comment. My experience from prospects and customers differs. Some just want to provision applications to them, there is no broader strategy. Others customers who are more mature, they see a greater context between isolation and clustering of users, hardware, OS, apps, data and profile information. So there is no global statement. For example use case driven it could be access to a specific Excel sheet enriched with visual basic to backend systems but limited to a special Excel version. Another example I have learned comes with web-based applications based on Java wich are limited to specific browsers and versions. Those companies want to rollout new hardware to their employees with Windows 7 – classical Windows 7 migration – but are faces with the fact that those applications require an older version of Microsoft Explorer.
Personally I think those “corporate apps” are usually home grown applications where special departments started to develop IT applications for specific needs. I have found a lot of those home grown applications in verticals like finance, insurance, healthcare sector where the original business is “abstract” as well.
Would love to hear your perspective about apps.
Cheers,
Patrick