A day at the Mobile Races

On January 27 2009 I opened a LinkedIn Poll to gauge "What will be the most widely adopted Enterprise Mobile Device in 2009?", which I decided would run for 2 months or 200 votes, whichever was first.

To get the best cross section of voters I placed it on various groups of which I'm a member, such as...

• Enterprise Mobility
• Mobile Architects
• Mobile Development Professionals
• Mobilists

Right from the offset I knew this would be an emotive question in the mobile arena and I had my own opinion who would win. I knew it would be close, but I did not know then how close it would be and how many times the lead would change.

Today, Monday March 30, the poll closed and could be described as a three horse race, in fact let me describe my poll like a day at the (mobile) races.

The runners and riders have been paraded around the paddock for us observers to look at  for a while now...

1. Blackberry (BB), the original, with the most form and probably the favorite...
2. Windows Mobile (WM), the close runner to BB in previous races, making ever increasing advances into BB's area
3. iPhone (iP), the hot new pretender to the crown of BB & WM... a good outside bet
4. Andriod (AN), the latest and second new pretender, out of the Google Stables
5. Symbian (SY), the longest in this race out of our 5

There are in the stalls, the tension is high & there off! Over the two fence race

• 11 February... the first Jump, iP is hot into the lead, ahead 7% from 2nd position BB and BB 3% ahead of WM in 3rd spot. This could be due to the extra training the Apple Stables have given with the release of the SDK in the latter part of 2008.

• 27 March... BB has come back into the race ahead of iP by 5%, iP in what looks like a solid 2nd position, 7% ahead of WM. BB digging hard into the experience of previous outings.

• 30 March... WM has fought back, for a while going ahead of iP and BB is starting to fade slightly. This is a surprise, iP was pulling ahead, partially due to the knowledge of future outings with SDK3.0 as the rider. WM has been training well in the last two years.

The finish post is in sight and iP pulls back.

• Its a photo finish!.. The Final results are in... iP Wins 1% ahead of WM, with BB in third

Could this be due to the news that Citrix  has just released an ICA Client for iP , along with the news from Sybase that the iPhone can now support Enterprise email, calendar, tasks and contacts with Mobile Office and Sybase's partnership with SAP?

Only time can tell. What is sure is that the Apple iPhone is now a definate contender and we will have to watch this three horse race closely.

tags: iphone  blackberry  windows mobile  poll  

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