In the video below, senior technology analyst Eric Bleeker discusses the growing war between Samsung and Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) for control of business spending on mobile devices.
Neither Samsung nor Apple have historically been titans of business spending; yet, with spending shifting toward mobile devices whether via BYOD (bring your own device), or company purchases, both are eyeing business spending as one of the most powerful areas of mobile growth in the coming years. What kind of opportunity are we talking about? Eric notes that in the United States, small and medium, or SMB, spending on advanced technology was about $125 billion in 2011. When you consider there's also large enterprise spending, and that figure is only for the United States while technology spending is increasingly global, the size of this opportunity becomes apparent.
As the dominant smartphone vendors, both Samsung and Apple have the inside track to capture an increased share of this spending in coming years. Yet, the storyline of this battle became clearer today when Apple Senior Vice President of Marketing Phil Schiller tweeted out a study from F-Secure, which showed how troublesome Malware is rapidly shifting to target Android. In 2012, 79% of malware threat families and varients targeted Android, while just .7% targeted Apple. Malware might not be an everyday problem for consumers, but its extremely important for risk-averse IT departments.
In the end, Samsung has responded to this threat by releasing its own custom security software, named Knox, which aims to protect Samsung devices from Android security devices. That could prove to be a powerful differentiator for Samsung in the Android world. Yet, the company is playing catch-up on many features versus iOS. Plus, there's a perception that Apple's more tightly-controlled software iOS is inherently more safe than Android. Whether or not Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) and Samsung continue improving Android security, once perceptions are established in the IT world, they're a hard thing to change. To hear Eric's full thinking on this matter, watch the video below.
