Android, Apple Move to the Office - Wall Street Journal

By Amir Efrati

At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, all eyes are fixed on the consumer market for new smartphones and tablets. But such devices are increasingly finding their way into companies and governments, as employees demand to have the same features on the devices they use for work, and not just so they can play “Angry Birds.”

Devices powered by Android as well as Apple’s iPhone and iPad are making inroads in the “enterprise” market, which has long been dominated by Research in Motion, maker of the BlackBerry.

Handset makers like HTC are doing their part to push Androidâ€"and, soon, Microsoft’s Windows Phoneâ€"into the enterprise market.

HTC executives said Tuesday they recently created a team called HTCPro, with more than 50 employees who work to make sure HTC’s Android-based devices have the right features for enterprises, including the ability to encrypt data, and lobby such companies to buy them for their employees. HTC also works closely with “mobile device management,” or MDM, companies that give tools to corporate IT managers to oversee employee devices.

David Jaeger, executive director of global enterprise at HTC, said his team is looking at ways to also attract individual consumers who could use HTC devices for work purposes, as more companies start to give employees the freedom to purchase their own devices. Many people are choosing popular consumer devices that make it easier to surf the Web and offer a broader range of applications like games than do BlackBerrys.

“The [enterprise] sale is happening in the retail store,” Jaeger said.

Samsung Electronics, the No.1 maker of Android-powered devices, also recently created a corporate sales forceâ€"set up by a recent hire from RIMâ€"to go after business customers.

Another handset maker, Motorola Mobility, goes a step further than HTC and Samsung by selling security software for Android-powered devices to corporate customers. Google is expected to close its acquisition of Motorola Mobility in the coming days or weeks.

On Wednesday the Motorola unit that sells the corporate security software, called 3LM, said Japan’s second-biggest wireless carrier, KDDI, would begin selling Android devices outfitted with 3LM software to corporate customers.

Google hasn’t been aggressive about tailoring its Android mobile operating system to corporations, preferring to let other firms such as 3LM, Good Technology, and Enterproid add security features around Android so that devices can handle confidential documents securely or let people to remotely access secure company resources.

3LM, founded by two former members of Google’s Android team, manages more than 100,000 Android devices for corporate clients, making it smaller than many of its competitors who have had a head start. 3LM, which stands for “the three laws of mobility,” began selling the secure Android software last fall.

“Coming from the core Android team gives [3LM] a little bit of an edge,” said Jad Boniface, an HTC developer program manager.

Still, Apple has a commanding lead over Android in the enterprise market. In October, research firm IDC said that in 2011 corporations were expected to buy 50 million smartphones for their employeesâ€"with 19 million of them made by Apple and 8 million powered by Android. Both of them are taking market share from RIM, which was expected to sell 22 million devices to companies in 2011.