Intermedia, the largest independent source of SMB mobile device activations, releases its “2013 Small + Medium Business Mobile Trends Report”
2013-12-12
Mountain View, Calif. – Dec. 12, 2013 – iPhones and iPads accounted for 76 percent of all mobile device activations on its network since January 2013, according to Intermedia in its “2013 Small + Medium Business Mobile Trends Report.”
With over 190,000 activations, Apple accounted for six out of every eight mobile devices activated by Intermedia’s SMB customers, despite other studies showing Android’s overall lead in market share.
Intermedia’s annual report also finds that Samsung has pulled ahead of the competition in the past two years to establish itself as the No. 2 device manufacturer among Intermedia’s SMB customers—surpassing activations of all other Android manufacturers, as well as Windows and BlackBerry mobile devices.
“Small and medium-sized businesses are choosing Apple for mobile delivery of their cloud IT services at an incredible rate,” said Michael Gold, president of Intermedia. “Many customers already leverage Intermedia services on smartphones and tablets as the primary front-end for running their business. Samsung and Apple will compete intensely for these business users by driving down prices, extending functionality, and addressing SMB needs like security. This means the ultimate winner will be businesses themselves.”
Intermedia’s full report and infographic are available at Intermedia.net/MobileTrends.
Additional trends detailed in the report include:
- Activation spikes are not tied to holiday sales. BYOD trends suggest that holiday gift giving would have a large impact on mobile device activations. However, Intermedia’s report found a far stronger correlation of activation spikes with vendor release cycles, such as Apple’s spring and fall iPhone/iPad/iOS release cycle.
- Businesses have ignored the lower-cost iPhone 5c. The iPhone 5s was activated at nearly five times the rate of the 5c in October 2013, the first full month since Apple debuted both phones.
- Even older iPhone models saw more activations than the 5c. In the same October period, iPhone 5, 4s and 4 models were all activated more than the iPhone 5c.
- Keep an eye on Microsoft, too. While Windows smartphone and tablet activations made up only 1 percent of activations in the first ten months of 2013, they grew by roughly 93 percent over that period. Microsoft’s planned purchase of Nokia, along with their aggressive mobile agenda, could make them a viable threat to Samsung and even Apple in the medium term.
- The SMB mobile market is still expanding. Aggregate figures show that mobile device activations are rising across all manufacturers—as opposed to vendors trading share-of-activations—implying that smartphones and tablets have yet to reach full saturation in the SMB market.
Report Methodology
The findings of this report are derived from Intermedia’s non-personally identifiable log of ActiveSync activations over time. Intermedia’s customers use ActiveSync to synchronize their mobile devices with their desktop computers.
As the largest independent provider of hosted Exchange, Intermedia is the leading source for objective SMB mobile device activation trends. It delivers integrated email, calendars, contacts and other essential business tools to nearly 700,000 business users. Intermedia is the only business email provider in the world that possesses this volume of mobile activation data without any affiliation to a particular device vendor or mobile operating system.
About Intermedia
Intermedia is the world’s largest one-stop shop for cloud IT services and business applications. Its Office in the Cloud™ delivers the essential services that SMBs need to do business – including hosted Exchange, Hosted PBX, SecuriSync file sync and share, security, mobility and more.
All of Intermedia’s services are pre-integrated for a seamless user experience. They are all managed via Intermedia’s HostPilot® control panel, with just one login, one password, one bill and one source of support – creating tremendous cross-service efficiencies for both users and IT administrators. In addition, they all offer enterprise-grade security, 99.999% availability and 24/7 customer care to assure a worry-free experience.
Founded in 1995, Intermedia was the first to offer hosted Microsoft Exchange. With 90,000 customers and 750,000 users, it is the world’s largest provider of hosted Exchange, outside of Microsoft itself.
Intermedia also enables over 13,500 channel partners – including VARs, MSPs, telcos and cable companies – to sell cloud services under their own brand, with full control over billing, pricing and every other element of their customer relationships.
Intermedia’s 600 employees in 3 countries manage 10 datacenters to power its Office in the Cloud – and to assure its famous worry-free experience. Learn more at Intermedia.net.
Media Contact:
Kristen Berry, (650) 691-7318, [email protected]