Droid Outsells iPhone: Why CIOs Should Care

Brace yourselves for the onslaught. Sales of smartphones with the Google Android OS – which are available via multiple carriers in a variety of form factors – expanded rapidly in 2Q 2010, according to Gartner. In fact, they surpassed Apple’s iPhone OS to become the third-most-popular OS in the world. This means CIOs can expect more demand than ever from employees looking to connect these devices to enterprise email and business applications. While you may not think Droid is enterprise-worthy, we guarantee your employees are already using these smartphones for business, whether or not you sanction them.

Even more important for the CIO is Gartner’s finding that in the U.S, Android overtook Research In Motion’s enterprise stalwart BlackBerry OS to become the No. 1 smartphone OS in this region. “A non-exclusive strategy that produces products selling across many communication service providers (CSPs), and the backing of so many device manufacturers, which are bringing more attractive devices to market at several different price points, were among the factors that yielded its growth this quarter," said Carolina Milanesi, research VP at Gartner, in a prepared statement.

If you haven’t yet developed a strategy for dealing with multiple mobile device operating systems in your enterprise, you’d best move quickly. Worldwide mobile device sales to end users totaled 325.6 million units in the second quarter of 2010, a 13.8 percent increase from the same period in 2009, according to Gartner. Smartphone sales to end users totaled 61.6 million units in 2Q 2010, accounting for 19 percent of worldwide mobile device sales. This represents a mobile device market share increase of 50.5 percent for smartphones compared with 2Q 2009. The top four smartphone OS vendors all exhibited growth in 2Q 2010, and together account for 91 percent of worldwide smartphone OS sales, up 6 percent year-on-year.

The Gartner report comes on the same day that RIM is launching the new BlackBerry Torch on the AT&T network in the U.S. The $199 Torch is RIM’s first touchscreen smartphone with a slide-out keyboard. For CIOs pondering whether the new RIM OS can delight your workers and please IT, here are 10 fast facts about BlackBerry Torch to help guide your buying decision.

If you’re not already using Android, here are nine CIO-worthy Droid apps that may change your mind. And, if iPhone still holds your heart, these are the efficiency-enhancing iPhone apps every CIO needs.

Gartner: Worldwide Sales of Smartphones to End Users By OS, 2Q 2010

(Thousands of units)