Right now I am sitting on a commuter train going into London and have been stunned by one thing:for the first time, I am not one of the only people with an Android phone.  In fact I am not nearly the only one as within the space of 3m there are not less than 5 Htc Desires and a HTC Magic. Could android have finally got its foot in the door when it comes enterprise mobile?

Clearly we are approaching a stage  where similarly to the Iphone, Android is finally being taken into the work place.  The long term bedrock that the blackberry is the only phone for business appears to be crumbling away with each day that passes. 

In my opinion Android for consumers was merely the springroll starter for the meal, quite tasty but not that satisfying- once more widespread use of it happens in the work place that’s really where the meal really starts.  

So Who’s taking it up?

Luckily through this blog and through my personal networks, I have been fortunate to meet some really interesting people who class themselves as early adopters and have been using Android within the work place. David, a creative professional in London has been using it for a few months now since the Google nexus One came out.

I have always been keeping and eye on Android since it was announced, when i saw that Google were bringing out a phone to rival the iphone – I felt the time was right to make the leap.

Since he used Gmail at work anyway to archive correspondence and keep track of project correspondence, having offline access and great gmail integration was the winner for him– especially on the commute which would otherwise be down time.

David is not alone, Claire who works for an Architectural practice in North London has also moved to Android.  She worked for a company which was windows mobile only, meaning that access to office network was mandated using Microsoft’s legacy mobile system. 

When you saw people with iphones and blackberrys, doing far more with their phones, we jumped at the opportunity to move to another platform that could give us more.

The Blackberry option, can be quite expensive especially for a small practice like ours, and unless you pay for the full Blackberry Enterprise server, your experience can be very limiting.  Moving to Android and Google Apps has saved us a lot and boosted our productivity outside the office.

The two case studies above are but a small sample of the people I have spoken to moving to android since its launch two years ago. From my discussions with individuals from sales management to CEO level, I have gleaned some really wonderful insights into using a smart phone at work which I hope will be useful to you.  

Over the next week, I will be able to delve more deeply into what and how they use it. However its clear that we are already seeing the trend where many and Android phone is going to be sitting in a suit pocket or briefcase this Monday morning. 

I know there are a lot more stories out there, so if you would like to share how or why you use Android in your work, I would be really interested to hear it.  Feel free to comment, send me a tweet or even let me know via Contact Androidbloke above.

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