While Windows dominates laptop platforms, your choices for handheld platforms are much greater. Mobile Linux isn't quite ready to join Palm OS, RIM BlackBerry, Symbian and Windows Mobile in the enterprise lineup, however, this platform will likely be a contender with smartphone devices emerging this year and becoming more widely available next year (for more information,).
For now, RIM BlackBerry dominates wireless e-mail, and is increasingly being used for other types of enterprise data, via the BlackBerry push architecture or Java clients. Windows Mobile is the platform most widely supported by mobile application developers, making it the top choice for many enterprises.
Symbian has seen very little adoption in the United States--in our poll, only 7 percent reported using this platform. Palm OS (now Garnet OS) has done well with wireless e-mail, but given the OS's limitations, including its lack of support for multithreaded multitasking, we don't see a lot of developers working on native applications.
Looking ahead to the rest of the decade, we expect mobile Linux, RIM BlackBerry, Symbian and Windows Mobile to be the major supported mobile OS platforms for enterprise applications. Palm already supports Windows Mobile and has announced plans to use mobile Linux as the migration path for its Garnet OS. At a layer above the OS, the key software platforms are likely to be Microsoft .Net and Java.
Mobility In The Middleware