Deutsche Bank analyst Chris Whitmore says corporate IT is warming up to the iPhone. In a research note published yesterday das analyst says, "There is growing evidence that the iPhone is making inroads into the Enterprise."

Whitmore thinks Apple will sell 2 million iPhones to big business by the end of the year, some through reimbursements to employees and some through IT department purchases. If those numbers hold, the iPhone will own about 7% of the Enterprise smartphone market in 2009, up from the 2% it controlled in 2008.

What's up with the shift? Whitmore notes four reasons:

• User satisfaction - highlighted by the recent J.D. Power surveys of both consumer and business smartphone users
• Enterprise applications
• The iPhone's level of innovation
• The virtual keyboard - according to Whitmore, the thought that business users have to have a physical keyboard on a smartphone has turned out to be a 'fallacy.'

However, businesspeople might not agree that they don't need a physical keyboard if their first virtual keyboard isn't on an iPhone. UK researcher Canalys has taken a look at touchscreens and future smartphone purchases. The firm finds the ground shifting the touchscreen's way. Of the 3,000 survey respondents in the UK, Germany, and France, 38% say their next phone will have a finger-oriented touchscreen, while 16% say theirs will have a stylus-operated touchscreen.

But a lot of people who have virtual keyboard-only phones miss the physical keys. According to Canalys, 53% of people who own a touchscreen phone say they won't buy another one, though they may have bought the wrong one for them to start. A majority of iPhone and HTC users say they'll keep the virtual keys on their next phones, while less than a third of Sony Ericsson touchscreen phone owners say their next phone won't have buttons.

[via Fortune, The Register]