• Android model: Your UEM platform or company apps and cloud providers might require a minimal model of Android to perform accurately or to adjust to their safety requirements.
• RAM and storage capability: Some gadgets provide minimal capability to supply an affordable worth. However that may hamper efficiency, particularly for private/work separation. An excellent minimal for corporate-issued gadgets is 8MB of RAM and 64GB of storage, to supply adequate capability for operating a number of apps and switching amongst them with no efficiency hit. (Google’s official minimal is 3MB of RAM and 32GB of storage to help Android Enterprise.)
• A number of-SIM help. Individuals who work in a number of nations or should use their very own SIM card for private use and a company one for enterprise use ought to use gadgets that supply two SIM trays or use, the place carriers help them, eSIMs which might be saved digitally on the gadgets. Look forward to finding variations in multi-SIM help even for a similar mannequin cellphone throughout nations and carriers, so buy rigorously to make sure you have all of the wanted variations.
• Some customers work in robust environments the place you’ll need more durable telephones higher capable of face up to adjustments in air strain, humid and moist situations, warmth and chilly, and drops, bangs, and scrapes. That might imply utilizing ruggedized gadgets, shopping for ruggedized circumstances for frequent gadgets, or avoiding gadgets with traits, like very skinny supplies or folding screens, which might be extra prone to be broken. For optimum sturdiness, ruggedized telephones or circumstances ought to conform to the American Mil-Std-810G standard or the newer Mil-Std-810H standard.

Vendor concerns for Android gadgets world wide

Regional variations in vendor sources generally is a issue within the gadgets IT chooses to supply and/or help. These variations can each steer native corporations to particular Android cellphone distributors and require multinational corporations to think about such variations when formulating their approved-device lists for employee-liable gadgets and within the alternative of corporate-liable gadgets they furnish.

Along with Apple, there are 14 present Android distributors with 1% or extra utilization share in not less than one area: Google, Honor Gadget, Huawei, Infinix Mobility, Itel Cell, Lenovo-owned Motorola Mobility, Nokia, OnePlus, Oppo, Realme Chongqing Telecommunications, Samsung Electronics, Tecno Cell, Vivo Cell Communication, and Xiaomi. Though LG discontinued its Android enterprise in July 2021, sufficient gadgets are nonetheless in use to indicate up in utilization charts, most notably in South America, and they also should want IT help.

Enterprise buy and BYOD patterns for Android

Utilization share in enterprise, versus general shopper utilization, is prone to skew extra towards the main distributors, however information on enterprise cell market share — whether or not for corporate-provided or BYOD gadgets — shouldn’t be obtainable even from IDC, which focuses on monitoring installed-product market share throughout a variety of enterprise classes.

Nonetheless, IDC analyst Kiranjeet Kaur notes that in a lot of the world, companies aside from multinational corporations wrestle to justify the expense of buying Samsung’s enterprise-class Android Secured by Knox telephones and Apple iPhones — or, the place obtainable, even Motorola’s barely cheaper Edge Fusion and Extremely telephones or Google’s Pixel telephones — for anybody however executives. So their IT organizations are likely to concern adequately securable Android telephones from broad-market distributors that supply fashions throughout a wider vary of costs. Such Android distributors are additionally extra prone to have business-oriented advertising and gross sales groups in key markets than the opposite Android distributors, she provides.

I classify OnePlus, Oppo, and Xiaomi (and Nokia in East Africa and Sony in Japan) as broad-market distributors that supply not less than some business-appropriate fashions. Google, Motorola, and Samsung additionally provide sub-enterprise fashions for broad-market enterprise use.

In a lot of the world, people who use their very own telephones for work — BYOD customers — sometimes decide the cheaper Android telephones, as a result of in most markets the enterprise-class gadgets merely are unaffordable. In lots of wealthy nations like Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK, and the US, each IT and people favor enterprise-class gadgets from Apple and Samsung. However in a lot of Europe — together with wealthy nations like Austria, France, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands — the combo is broader than Apple and Samsung, with lower-cost, extra consumer-focused Android distributors like Xiaomi having important traction amongst customers general.

IT organizations — particularly in multinational corporations — are likely to keep away from the low-cost Chinese language distributors typically favored by particular person shoppers in lots of components of the world for worth causes. Why? As a result of on these low-cost gadgets, “the app expertise could be shaky and may’t implement options correctly, or apps don’t set up correctly,” IDC’s Kaur says. That poor high quality for the one gadgets many staff can afford does pose a problem for IT when supporting BYOD.

I classify Honor, Infinix, Itel, Realme, Tecno, and Vivo as distributors of Android telephones which might be iffy for enterprise use round app compatibility. And I counsel towards Huawei gadgets resulting from longstanding considerations over Huawei’s alleged spying, as famous earlier.

The place IT will encounter the main Android distributors

Samsung and Apple are the main cellphone distributors in almost each market, which mixes with their increased safety capabilities to make them normal gadgets in multinational corporations.

Nevertheless, South Korea-based Samsung has little or no utilization share in China, whose authorities insurance policies favor Chinese language distributors and the place Samsung’s China Android business strategy failed resulting from Samsung’s personal errors. Samsung’s share in Japan can also be fairly low, because it has been for greater than a decade. US-based Apple has little or no share in India, largely round value but additionally because of the authorities’s Make in India insurance policies that favor merchandise made in India; in 2017, Apple started making iPhones in India due each to that strain and to hunt a producing different to China, the place the overwhelming majority of its gadgets are nonetheless made.

Some areas have main distributors not seen broadly or in any respect elsewhere. For instance:

• Tecno and Infinix have sizeable utilization shares in Africa, and each have growing shares in some Asian nations and in Latin America.
• Motorola is critical in South America and has pockets of adoption in Europe.
• Huawei is critical in Africa, Mexico, China, India, and components of Southeast Asia, however general it has misplaced about half its market in two years.
• Oppo, Realme, and Vivo have notable presences in a lot of Asia and in components of the Center East.
• Xiaomi is a major vendor in a lot of the world — particularly in Asia, Europe, Mexico, the Center East, and South America — however is barely current within the US, Canada, and Oceania.

In contrast, some well-known names don’t have important presence outdoors a handful of markets, falling beneath the 1.0% threshold globally:

• Google’s Pixel gadgets have little international utilization share however have proven development in developed nations, topping out in New Zealand at 12.4%, adopted by Japan at 5.4% and by Canada at 5.1%, with decrease presence in Australia, the UK, and the US, in addition to in a number of European nations.
• The well-reviewed OnePlus gadgets have minor utilization share globally, although they’re present in numerous nations internationally, together with China, India, Israel, Norway, and Sweden.
• Chinese language producer Honor has a notable presence in a handful of nations — together with China, Czechia, Mexico, Peru, Russia, and several other Central American nations — however it’s primarily invisible globally. It additionally makes use of its personal MagicOS, primarily based on Android 14 and proprietary apps, leaving broad compatibility a query mark.

The tables beneath, all primarily based on usage data from StatCounter (primarily based on internet entry from gadgets), present which cell phone distributors have 1% utilization share or extra throughout numerous areas, highlighting the main distributors in every. It additionally reveals the shares of these distributors in choose nations in every area, exhibiting the range inside every area that might have an effect on IT help choices.

Though the info is from April 2024, the chances have been pretty secure for a number of years, with the best variations amongst these with the smallest percentages, which regularly transfer round in that enormous backside tier.

International cell utilization share

Africa cell utilization share

Asia cell utilization share

Central America and Caribbean cell utilization share

(Chosen nations — no general regional roundup information is on the market.)

Europe cell utilization share

Center East cell utilization share

(Chosen nations — no general regional roundup information is on the market.)

North America cell utilization share

Oceania cell utilization share

South America cell utilization share

Vendor concerns for front-line Android gadgets

For specialty makes use of — comparable to ruggedized gadgets within the discipline or special-purpose gadgets in retail and logistics — there’s a distinct set of front-line Android vendors for what Google calls devoted gadgets. Zebra Expertise, Motorola, Kyocera, and Honeywell are maybe probably the most well-known, however there are lots of others.

These gadgets are sometimes offered as an built-in resolution, combining particular {hardware} gadgets with required specialty options like scanners and a software program or cloud suite custom-made for the enterprise’s duties, comparable to stock administration in retail, cargo monitoring in logistics, remedy distribution in healthcare, or sensor studying in utilities.

As you’ll be able to see at Google’s Android Enterprise Recommended tool, these front-line gadgets have a tendency to make use of older variations of Android than shopper and knowledge-worker gadgets do, largely due to the customizations made. As with most special-purpose gear, stability is crucial, so having a move of function updates generally is a unfavourable, in contrast to for general-purpose utilization.

This text was initially printed in October 2022 and up to date in June 2024.