If you haven’t heard, most Windows Mobile Handheld Operating Systems, utilized on enterprise and consumer-grade devices will reach their end of support through Microsoft by 2020 (See Milestone Guides). While there are a number of reasons to move to Android, it all comes back to one: productivity.
To know the future, you have to understand Android’s footing in the marketplace. Currently, Android is in 80% of all mobile devices, making it the leader across all mobile OS choices, which includes both enterprise and consumer-grade combined. That number is growing every day, due in large part to Android’s ease of use/UX and its flexibility to be configured and customized per use case. This has also attracted a much larger OS developer resource pool (Internal and 3rd party) than that of Apple, where the OS ecosystem is closed and hardware limited to their own form factors. The value in having diversity at a development level can be seen in many ways; unlike Apple, Android is very capable to update frequently, attract hardware manufacturer partnerships with the best in mobility and produce the largest app library available.
Change is inevitable, Windows users. If you want to operate an enterprise around the strengths of mobility today – hardware, software and services – drawing from all of the best practices of IoT that apply to your business, Android is what will power (almost) all of them. Windows will be gone and the wise will turn focus to the many internal factors to entertain for a smooth migration, rather than try to salvage a solution to retain legacy tech when possible.
Every situation will have its own set of specific concerns, requirements and expectations. App migration, system configurations, user experience, security, to name some likely talking points will be on most project stakeholder’s minds. The collective goal, however of all, is to integrate Android (and the hardware it runs on) the same way into operations as the legacy devices and the previous Windows OS of the past, did. Equally, everyone wants a migration path to new tech without hassles, from start to finish, at a price that isn’t painful.
However, as companies start to shift their mobility infrastructure with those core directives, many within their discovery phase will put far too much focus into eliminating what can go wrong vs how migrating to a new OS and compatible hardware will actually improve business. This video merely cracks the surface as to why moving to Android is not only the right move, it’s really the only one:
Like mentioned, functional performance is only the beginning. Here’s some more reading: