Can Android take BlackBerry Government work? -GCN.com

Google device brings smart-phone market, but weaknesses are in the way of Government adoptionThe most recent numbers in the smartphone wars, and they are telling the consequences for how government employees are to interact with each other — along with those responsible for the Agency and the public — in the near future.

In a report released on 8 March, the research firm comScore said total market share of Android smart phones, powered by the Google mobile OS, had surpassed the share of the market for Research in Motion BlackBerry with a clear margin.

Between October 2010 and February 2011, comScore reported, BlackBerry lost 5 percentage points in the global market of smart-phone, from 35.8% to 30.4%. Meanwhile, Android gained nearly eight percentage points — from 23.5% to 31.2 per cent.

If you are a federal employee and I wonder why should you care about some decimal points of market share, it is because the displacement marks the emergence of a technology that is likely to be a standard setter for social and professional communication in the Government for years.

It's a model that has played out many times before.

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Consumers go wild about a product, and penetrates the commercial enterprise, through the Office of the Chief Executive. When government employees are starting to use them for quasiprofessional purposes, uses the penalties management agency limited, acceptable use policies are written to the end and the technology becomes firmly implanted in the workforce.

It happened with the BlackBerry, as happened with Facebook, it happened with Twitter — which became commonly used technologies in the public sector.

Android horizon

Even so, even if Android is increasing, it has a long way to go before it lets you consolidate that position. So far, no federal agency has officially supported the popular phone. But that is changing, say the program managers and market analysts. Could not happen immediately, but Android will eventually permeate the Community Government, they say.

Existing barriers for Android are the traditional ones for emerging technologies: the lack of strong security and enterprise device management. Even if RIM has handles well, Android doesn't. It is no coincidence therefore that one of the major smart-phone exploit malware first hit the Android ecosystem was before.

At the beginning of March, a batch of 58 applications have been found to contain malware, called DroidDream, designed to take delivery of a smart phone and create a mobile botnet. When downloaded, the exploit of DroidDream — known as "rageagainstthecage" — would get access to the Android kernel and take control of permissions on the phone. Would then download an application for managing tasks that would make it impossible to remove both programs.

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