A recent report from Appcelerator and IDC shows developers believing that Apple will win the enterprise marketplace over Google’s Android. This quarter’s 16 point spread (53.2% vs. 37.5% respectively) shows a significant shift from the 44%/44% tie from Q3 of 2011.

Appcelerator and IDC attribute this change to the growing strength of Apple in the enterprise especially considering several factors: the popularity of the iPad; frequent reports of Android malware; enterprise challenges in dealing with Android fragmentation; and resultant anecdotal reports of enterprises re-evaluating widespread Android deployment outside of particular business vertical implementations like M2M.

The report isn’t all that grim for Google:

The noticeable erosion of developer interest in Android over the last four quarters, noted by Appcelerator and IDC in the Q1 2012 report, seems to have been arrested. The huge growth in Android device shipments—especially handsets—and more affordable price points are outweighing steadily increasing Android ecosystem fragmentation and monetization challenges.

The rise of device adoption may be able to outweigh fears of fragmentation with proper testing. Utilizing in-the-wild testing, enterprise developers can subvert the fears of fragmentation by testing their apps across a variety of OS versions, devices, carriers and locations.

What do you think? With the fragmentation barrier addressable, can Android catch back up to Apple in the enterprise market or is there something else standing in the way?