In late February, Dell announced it was selling a version of its Windows 8-based Latitude 10 tablet with better security features for the enterprise market. While Windows 8 tablets have only been on sale for a few months, it's been nearly four years since Apple launched its first iPad tablet.
Even with that much of a head start, a new white paper from the research firm Moor Insights and Strategy claims that Windows 8-based tablets could be the big winner over the iPad in terms of selling units to enterprise customers. The paper claims several factors should make Windows 8 tablets like the Dell Latitude 10, the HP ElitePad 900 and the Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet 2 more attractive for businesses.
The paper points out that all three tablets have batteries that can be removed and replaced by enterprise customers and the battery for the Latitude 10 can be removed and replaced by anyone. By contrast, the battery for the iPad can only be removed and replaced by Apple. All three Windows 8 tablets are also considered to be better made than the iPad and all have more ports for expandability, although the report does concede that the iPad's display has a higher resolution.
Perhaps more importantly, the three Windows 8 tablets have better security features and better compatibility with current PC enterprise software than the iPad. It states:
The new breed of enterprise tablets supports new touch-based scenarios with known IDE (integrated development environment) while supporting full backward compatibility with legacy peripherals and software. iPads require new apps written with new IDEs and do not support legacy OSX apps and hardware.
Finally, the three Windows 8 tablets cost about the same as Apple's iPad, but the research firm believes the iPad actually costs more if the company has to put in the management tools it needs for the iPad to work for the business. The white paper's conclusions made a good argument that, at least for the moment, the iPad is not the way to go for enterprise customers interested in buying tablets for its workers.
Source: Moor Insights and Strategy | Image via Dell
Via: AllThingsD.com
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