In China, though, companies don't have the luxury of limiting choice, at least not with smartphones-consumers buy new phones on a whim. Last year, Li saw iPhones everywhere. On a business trip there a couple of weeks ago, Li noticed Samsung phones had become super-hot.

Slideshow:

Analysts expect the iPhone to rebound in the coming months. "We've been seeing a lot of [Chinese] consumers holding off, waiting for the iPhone 5 as opposed to the iPhone 4S," Ben Cavender, associate principal at China Market Research, .

So how do Chinese companies handle Android's BYOD shortcomings? Chinese companies take a more heterogeneous, browser-based approach to bring a sense of order to a sea of BYOD smartphones. This might mean no VPN or multi-form factor authentication, says Li. "Corporate infrastructure in the U.S. is more secure than in China."

This might lend credence to the possibility that U.S. companies make too much out of the BYOD mobile security risk. "Yes, it's being blown way out of proportion," John Mensel, director of security services at Concept Technology, a 10-year-old IT consulting firm, .