While mobile device management (MDM) is only applied to a fraction of devices in use, organisations do not deploy MDM unless they are serious about mobile use.

So it is interesting to see that among users of XenMobile MDM, the proportion of iOS devices rose two percentage points to 58% during the fourth quarter of 2012. Android use saw a corresponding drop to 35%, with Windows Mobile flat on 7%.

But those global figures cover considerable regional variation.

Here in Asia Pacific and Japan, iOS had a 75% share (up seven points) with Android taking the remainder. Citrix officials noted "our Asia Pacific/Japan numbers continue to be skewed by a smaller number of customer deployments."

iOS also gained share in North America, reaching 62% "largely at the expense of Android" which slipped to 35%. Windows Phone accounted for just 3%.

It was a very different story in Europe, Middle East and Africa, where the three platforms are more evenly balanced. iOS's share dropped 13 points to 43%. Most of that transferred to Android, which saw an 11 point growth to 36%. The other two points went to Windows Mobile which lifted to 21%.

In terms of industries, the biggest adopter of Windows Mobile is Oil and Gas, possibly accounting for its position in EMEA. iOS was most widely used in insurance, legal services, leisure, entertainment, and energy. Android was most commonly seen in communications services, healthcare (especially home healthcare), and transportation.

But how are enterprises using MDM? Curiously, only 63% use it to enforce a passcode policy, which you could be forgiven for thinking would be the first thing any organisation would apply.

39% apply a GPS policy (there is no indication of the proportion that enable or disable GPS), and 32% restrict device resources (eg, the camera) or apps.

The most commonly blacklisted apps were Angry Birds, Facebook, Dropbox, YouTube, and Skype.

Citrix's full quarterly report on XenMobile MDM statistics is available here [PDF, 878K].