After months of troubles, Samsung expects 'large scale success' with Knox in enterprise

Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) has for years been cutting into BlackBerry's (NASDAQ:BBRY) hold on the enterprise smartphone market as more and more governments and businesses have adapted and allowed iPhones to be used as secure work devices. Samsung Electronics, the world's largest handset and smartphone maker, wants a piece of the action as well, but it faces hurdles in creating a unit that can work directly with enterprises on sales and support, and a robust security platform that can pass the rigorous security demands of major government agencies and enterprises. According to a Wall Street Journal report, over the past few months, Samsung's security system for mobile devices, Knox, has been hit with delays and programming glitches, which has frustrated clients including the U.S. Defense Department.

Knox lets IT managers have control over their employees' Samsung devices, walling off secure company data from applications for personal use on Samsung's smartphones running Google's (NASDAQ:GOOG) Android software. The service also lets IT administrators remotely shut down devices if they have been compromised or lost, and lets them know if it looks like a device's base code has been tampered with. Knox comes free on Samsung's Galaxy devices, but costs enterprises $3.60 a month per user. However, Samsung had never built up a customer-service network to work with enterprise or government customers, and had to do so on the fly as it was rolling out Knox. Additionally, despite assurances to the contrary from Samsung, Knox didn't come preloaded on any Samsung devices until the release of its Galaxy Note 3 phablet, which it debuted in September.

Samsung told the Journal it had received strong interest and positive feedback from its customers about Knox, and said it is working with "several Fortune 500 and government customers" on deploying the security system and expected "large scale success in 2014." Article