Research Slideshow:
Gartner's Top 10 Business Apps for Tablets

As Apple’s iPad and other tablets move from the consumer world into the corporate IT ecosystem, business applications are moving beyond simple personal productivity applications to include enterprise heavy-hitters such as CRM and ERP. Vendors are launching tablet applications to meet enterprise demand, following where users want to take the tablet platform, says Gartner vice president and analyst David Willis, and CIOs should be aware of the ways software is evolving to conform to the tablet platform. “There are many highly visible ‘quick wins’ for tablets, such as board books and sales automation, which the CIO can use to break new ground,” Willis says. “But not all tablet apps are created equal from an enterprise perspective. Businesses must evaluate tablet apps based on functionality and business process integration, user factors, system integration, management and security, application architecture and vendor viability.” According to Gartner’s latest forecast, worldwide media tablet sales to end users will total 63.6 million units in 2011, a 261.4 percent increase from 2010 sales of 17.6 million units. Media tablet sales will continue to experience strong growth through to the end of 2015 when sales are forecast to reach 326.3 million units. By the end of 2014, the installed base of devices based on new lightweight mobile operating systems like Apple iOS, Google Android and Microsoft Windows 8 will exceed the total installed base of all PC-based systems. Here, we take a look at Gartner’s predictions of the top 10 commercial business applications you'll see on tablets.