The speculation about Android has spiked this week with the $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility by Google coming to an end.
According to various surveys, security of Android devices remains the primary concern amongst IT managers despite having seen tremendous sales performance in the consumer market where Android based devices enjoyed a 59% market share of all total smartphones shipped in the first quarter of the year. Analysts have said that the Mobile Device Management (MDM) tools which most IT managers rely on to control Android devices that the employees use in the workplace are not fully functional. It was recently reported by Gartner that smartphones and tablets based on Android have not been fully implemented in large businesses as they are faced with the difficulty of managing devices running different versions of the operating system from various vendors.
Though 3LM is not an actual substitute for MDM as claimed by many analysts, the software comes bundled with features like Application Programing Interfaces which will increase the compatibility of Android based devices with third party MDM platforms. The company has not commented on its plans for the future of the software, though it is expected to rely on 3LM for better manageability of Android devices.
An analyst at J. Gold Associates, Jack Gold has said that most IT departments these days rely on low end solutions for MDM to manage Android devices used by the employees such as Exchange Active Sync. However he added that the association with Motorola Mobility following the takeover by Google will ensure that Google has access to some of the technologies previously developed by Motorola which the company will be looking to utilize for its Android based devices, Gold said.
The APIs and better management interfaces which are much needed by Google at the moment could be provided by Motorola Mobility, Gold predicted. He however said that this would not add any benefits to the existing versions of Android and would only prove beneficial for the later versions of Android giving them increased security at enterprise standards. Gold said that as a result current enterprise users of Android would not benefit from this unless they choose to rely on MDM platforms like Good or Enterproid.
