How the enterprise is adopting tablets (infographic)

It’s no secret enterprises have begun to adopt tablets with the same fervor of consumers. Since the debut of Apple’s iPad in Jan. 2010, the integration of tablet devices into our lives and work has progressed rapidly — so fast that it’s sometimes hard to put in perspective how quickly got here.

The exclusively obtained infographic below breaks down how far workforce adoption of tablet technology has come — and where it’s headed. (The graphic was sponsored by Lenovo and Qualcomm.)

In overall world market share for tablets, the iPad clobbers all others. The iPad accounted for nearly 80 percent of worldwide tablet sales during the past 12 months, but Android is slowly gaining ground, thanks to a wide variety of devices and prices. On the higher end, there are devices like the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and 8.9, and on the lower end there’s the upcoming Amazon Kindle Fire and already well-established Nook Color.

Enterprise adoption is quite different from total adoption. A just-released survey from Good suggests the iPad and iPad 2 were responsible for 96 percent of tablet activations in the enterprise in the third quarter of 2011. With just 4 percent of activations being Android-based, Apple has a clear lead with the enterprise crowd.

Business users have different needs with their tablets, chief among them are strong and versatile applications that keep the mobile workforce connected. The iPad has a clear lead in this area with more than 136,000 iPad-optimized apps while Google won’t reveal how many apps are actually optimized for Honeycomb-based tablets. (Some estimates guess it is under 1,000 at present.) One of the most promising enterprise applications we’ve seen recently is Polycom’s video-conferencing app that works for both iPad and Android tablets.

It’s unclear at this point if Android will be able to take away much of the share the iPad has secured with enterprise users, especially in Bring-Your-Own-Device workplaces. But we’ll be watching to see what happens in this exciting space and let you know the latest.