Why Apple's Trumping Android in Enterprises

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- When Bruce Poon Tip was exploring in the South Pole earlier this month, he needed a way to communicate with his 1,500 employees scattered across the globe.

But Poon Tip, the founder of Toronto-based global travel company G Adventures, was faced with a challenge: his laptop was too heavy to carry across Antarctica.

Employees from G Adventures use all Apple products all the time

His solution? The Apple (AAPL) iPhone.

"We're in some of the most unique corners of the world so mobility is very important," he said. "We have people communicating with us through just the touch of their iPhone from Bolivia to Mongolia."

Poon Tip said most of his team is equipped with an iPhone and iPad which they use to Tweet out updates during trips, to access travel apps and to post photos.

Other devices simply aren't an option.

"We had people arriving here with BlackBerry and Android phones and they can't survive in our environment because of how fast we move," he said.

G Adventures is just one of hundreds of companies which are starting to allow their employees to use iOS smartphones and tablets to access their corporate networks rather than devices made by Research In Motion (RIMM), which have long been the industry standard.

But while companies are flocking to iOS in droves, Google's (GOOG) Android operating system hasn't attracted the same level of interest, despite the platform's gains in the consumer market.

A new study from mobility solutions firm Good Technology found that iPhones represented roughly 53% of new device activations in the fourth quarter of 2011 for its enterprise customers, compared to 28% for Android-based phones. Even excluding the impact of the iPhone 4S, which was released in October, iOS activations outpaced Android every quarter last year.

Yet Android continues to surpass iOS on the consumer side. Among people who bought a smartphone in the last three months, 52% purchased Android devices compared to 37% who chose the iPhone, according to Nielsen.

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