Among Good Powered by BlackBerry (formerly Good Technology) customers who are building custom apps, the average organisation has developed 3.74 custom apps to help mobilise key business processes. More broadly, the calendar Q3 report showed a 30 per cent quarter-over-quarter increase in app activations and an increase in the number of organisations using multiple apps beyond email.
“The Q3 Good Mobility Index Report validates that enterprises are moving forward to the next stage of their mobility journeys,” said Billy Ho, Executive Vice President, Enterprise Product and Value Added Solutions, BlackBerry. “The ability for organisations to develop compelling, secure cross-platform mobile applications using the Good Dynamics platform is one of the key benefits that made the acquisition of Good so important to our strategy.”
For the fourth quarter in a row, secure browser led all app categories, growing 57 percent quarter-over-quarter to account for 37 per cent of all apps deployed by organisations. This trend is likely to continue as Good Access adds support for Windows. Custom apps, secure IM, document access and document editing followed as the next most popular app categories.
While app deployments increased overall, certain industries demonstrated a need for specific apps to meet unique demands. The most aggressive adopter of custom apps was the retail industry, where custom apps were the most popular app category at 40 percent. For the third straight quarter, the insurance industry also aggressively adopted custom apps (31 percent), while other “knowledge industries” such as financial services (25 per cent), business and professional services (15 per cent) and energy and utilities (13 per cent) also showed widespread use of custom apps. Furthermore, most organisations that build custom apps don’t stop at just one, as 58 percent have built two or more apps.
Government agencies and other public sector institutions focused their mobile initiatives on the document-based workflows that are critical to many e-government processes. In total, 43 per cent of all apps in government were either document access or document editing. Public sector also saw a 10 per cent quarterly increase in secure browser app activations to 31 per cent.
iOS rebounded to regain some of its previous losses in device activations, building its lead from 64 per cent to 66 per cent. This continues a trend among Good-activated devices where new iPhone launches result in an uptick in iOS market share. Android market share fell slightly to 31 percent, while Windows dropped to 2 per cent.
Heterogeneity seems to have taken hold in the tablet market, as the dominant lead iOS once had now appears to have eroded despite taking market share back from Android and Windows. iOS rose from 64 per cent to 71 percent of all tablet activations, while Android and Windows fell to 21 per cent and 8 per cent, respectively.
iOS ruled in regulated industries for the third quarter in a row, maintaining or growing huge leads in public sector (83 per cent), financial services (77 per cent), education (77 per cent) and insurance (68 per cent). After pulling ahead of iOS in high tech for the first time last quarter, Android maintained its lead with 52 percent of all activations in high tech and emerged with a slight lead over iOS in transportation.