eWEEK Europe Readers Prefer Android To iPhone

The Android platform makes a better business phone than the iPhone or Blackberry, according to a poll of eWEEK readers – while Microsoft’s Windows Mobile and the Symbian platform lagged far behind the other three platforms in the poll.

For a platform which is still only beginning to establish itself, Android made a very strong showing, getting 40 percent of the votes, ahead of Blackberry on 32 percent. Despite traditional hostility from IT managers – and a current spate of bad publicity around the iPhone 4’s antenna problems –  the iPhone scored an impressive 21 percent.

Few conclusions can be drawn with 80 responses to the poll so far, but Windows Mobile and Symbian both had very disappointing showings on 1.5 percent each.

Open source Android phones rule?

The Google Android platform has a strong showing, despite Google’s withdrawal from the handset market, winding down its Nexus One operation and leaving it to manufacturers including HTC with the Desire, and Motorola with the Droid (known as Milestone in the UK). Two new Droids are now in the offing – the Droid X and the Droid 2.

Blackberry still has a place in many business people’s hearts and pockets. It has successfully weathered a change from being known as a boring corporate machine to become a more consumer-friendly device, and aims to move further in that direction with Blackberry 6, which is expected soon.

iPhones were once regarded as unsuitable for business use, but a few well-publicised cases such as a large UK bank have changed that. However, the current problems with the iPhone 4 have led to poor reviews. Apple has so far avoided a product recall, but has had to offer free cases.

Windows Mobile is in a very difficult place. The Microsoft brand ought to make it work for people tied to Exchange email, but it has never been popular in Europe, and is now losing market share, and people wait for a new version, Windows Phone 7.  Despite this, its very low showing is a surprise.

And Symbian, too, ranked very low, despite the very vocal supporters it has among eWEEK readers. The OS has become open source, and there are questions whether the new version – Symbian^3 – has gone far enough to modernise it. A Gartner analyst has likened the new OS to the Titanic – and users are waiting for the Nokia N8 phone to introduce it to the world.

Our phone poll is on the PollDaddy site and is still open if you want to add your votes and comments.

Next poll: what do you think of mainframes?

This week’s poll (in the left column of our site) goes to the other extreme of IT – from pocket-sized phones to vast servers in racks.

IBM has just had its biggest mainframe launch in 20 years, with the zEnterprise server – a 5000 MIPs monster which includes a blade chassis with Power7 and Intel x86 servers under the mainframe’s control.

IBM hopes this will revive interest in mainframes – or to be more precise, argues that users never lost interest. However, other vendors have set their faces against mainframes: HP says IBM is pushing them like heroin, and Dell has revealed how it saved £100 million by turning its mainframes off.

We want you to tell us if you’re convinced. Do you have mainframes? And if so are you switching them off, or buying new ones? Or are you too small a company to ever think of running such a thing?

Click on this week’s poll and let us know – and join the discussion if you want to.