Samsung Tweaking Its Knox BYOD Software For Second Quarter Release

The enterprise and business sector is a very important market for the mobile device space. This has long been an area where companies like Google, Samsung, Blackberry, Microsoft and Apple have either dominated or vied for dominance. Blackberry for many years, especially during the early days of the Smartphone, has held a key spot in the hearts and minds of business and has long been regarded as one of the most secure platforms and mobile device providers out there. However, that changed during the last few years. It doesn't take much to see from the number of contenders and products offered that the playing field has almost been evened out and it is quickly becoming anyone's game.

Blackberry was a longtime champion provider of phones for businesses. And, through the Blackberry Enterprise Software, it gave IT managers the power to effectively manage their fleets of devices belonging to their organizations. Blackberry has managed to hold this position even now. But, Blackberry's position has been under attack at all levels by Apple and Samsung. Samsung has made strides to break into the Enterprise market by not only designing great phones like the Galaxy Note 3 and Galaxy S5, but going a step further by developing their Knox BOYD Software system.

If you're not familiar with Samsung's Knox Software, here is the skinny on it. Samsung released Knox 1.0 last year in an attempt to get on the same page as Apple and Blackberry by allowing their phones to be partitioned off by Enterprise IT departments. This means that a busy professional would only have to carry his sharp looking SGS5 and be able to manage both his personal and business accounts and applications from only one device. Samsung's Knox software allows for applications to be installed on each side of the partition and yet not mix in between or share compromising data. This is critical to any BYOD for Enterprise IT system.

Samsung released the software in October 2013 and it has slowly been picking up traction in the enterprise . The software is currently being used on 10 device models by 1 million users. Further, about 25 million Samsung devices are running the software and Samsung expects the number of devices capable of running the software to triple this year. This is nothing to look down at as Samsung has its Knox Software being used on over 40 carrier networks spread across 230 countries. So, I would say they are trying to get their foot more in the door. This interest in Samsung devices is expected to widen as executives and healthcare organizations are beginning to look at wearable devices like Samsung Galaxy Gear and the new Gear 2 that was recently announced. These devices show promise in the area of healthcare where it can alert with patient information. They can also be used by the financial management enterprises where instant updates via Knox-capable devices would provide up to the minute information that the workers need with the convenience of a device you can wear.

Samsung announced that the new Galaxy S5 would have a fingerprint reader that would now put it on par with the iPhone 5s. Through an analysis provided by Fiberlink Communications it is shown that out of 250,000 Android users polled, Samsung devices are used by more than 50 percent of them. There probably would have been more users with the Knox Software on their phone, but it was not available for all the Samsung Smartphone and tablet devices that businesses desired. Another significant issue is that many businesses have not looked to Samsung until recently to provide security software as this was an area closely guarded by Blackberry, Microsoft and Intel. But with Knox Software, time will tell if it will make a difference and move Samsung further into Enteripse market relevance.

Samsung is now going to strengthen it's Knox Software to version 2.0 and with that it will bring control of all Samsung services and applications, a single sign-on for end users of Samsung devices and Gear, cloud-based purchasing, and a Samsung Knox Marketplace store where 150 enterprise-tailored apps will be available to end users. Maybe this will be the kick that Samsung needs to bring it more into the enterprise space. So what do you think? Will Samsung Knox Software be enough to move it more into the enterprise market? Please leave your interesting comments in the section below or on our Facebook, Twitter or Google Plus pages. Keep it locked to Android Headlines for more news and reviews.

Category: Android News, Android Phone News

Orlando is a Soldier in the US Military. He has been an avid Android user since he bought his first Android phone, the Verizon Motorola Droid in Jan 2010. Since then he has owned many other Droid phones and has been an advocate for all things Android, Chrome and Google. In his spare time he enjoys giving reading books, writing poetry, watching movies on Netflix, giving tech advice on how to make things easier using Google products and the benefits of Google Drive cloud storage/computing and playing games on his HTC Evo 3D and Sophix Tab 740G.