Honeycomb Will Make Android King Of Enterprise, So Says Aaron Levie
Mister Aaron Levie is the chief executive of enterprise cloud storage company Box.net, and he's been so bold and so kind as to say that Google's Android will soon be the winner in the enterprise tablet race. Why not iPad? Why not the upcoming tablet from RIM, BlackBerry PlayBook? Because Android is an open system, Levie says Android's tablet operating system version 3.0 Honeycomb will bring with it an avalanche of enterprise applications for Android tablets. Levie notes that with this more open development ecosystem there comes more support for enterprise apps and a bigger IT community creating applications for Android.
We must assume he means "on a large enough device" since Android isn't an extremely new operating system, and has been on handheld devices for some time now. Levie continues that since Android focuses on multiple carriers, their ability to be on the fastest network (amongst always competing groups) will be another giant bonus point.
Apparently we're to understand that this same fellow Levie has "shot from the hip" before (his last claim being that HTML5 would kill desktop software,) but in this case we're inclined to believe he may have a point. Several points.
On the other hand, if you'd like to play devil's advocate, you'd note that not only is the iPad already established, but the Fortune 100 list of top companies in the world, 80 of them have begun testing or deploying iPad applications. Android devices currently take up around 30 percent of enterprise activations, while Apple scoops up a giant 65 percent. All of this of course is excluding RIM's gigantic presence, one that we're not sure will ever be extinguished.
Also a point to note: Box.net has recently launched its first Android application (Q4 2010) and now says they'd like to make it "as slick as its current iPad and iPhone versions," and is in negotiations with Samsung to release the app with what we expect to be a future version of the Galaxy Tab. Box.net's app has seen around 70k downloads in the Android Marketplace while it's been downloaded 250k times in Apple's App Store.
Do you agree with Aaron Levie? Will Android overtake Apple and (god forbid) RIM as well? Welcome to a world of possibility.
[Via Venture Beat]