As with the consumer mobile applications, enterprise applications also have the same branding challenges. Choosing the right Icon for your iOS and Android applications is very critical for how users discover and identify the app. Remember that once the application goes into the App Store (iOS and Android), the end user might have your enterprise app co-located along with 10s (or 100s) of other apps. According to recent stats, both iOS and Android have about 800,000+ apps. This means you better make sure that you take care of the branding and make the icon represent what it should.
Looking at the most current applications in the market, App icons can be categorized into three types.
Icon with Brand Full Name: As the name suggests, the App icon has the complete name of the company or the product. Probably “Full Name” is the same way that the company wants to get identified.
Icon with Brand Letter : Icon with the brand letter seems to be the least used. However, you will see that many famous companies like Google, Facebook, LinkedIn and Skype uses this kind of Icons for Mobile Apps.
Icon with Brand Image : By far this seems to be the most frequently used icon type. as you see below, many Apps use the Brand Image.
As a last note, make sure that you don’t get into any legal battles by designing the Icon close to another company’s Icon.
Remember : “It’s not just an Icon. It is your brand and a way for your users to identify the App”.