Filed under: Enterprise, iPhone
More growth seen for iPhone in business
Support continues to grow for the iPhone in the enterprise. TBI Research (subscription required) says Apple's answer to telephony is gaining ground in business, thanks largely to employees and execs grabbing an iPhone for personal use and deciding they just have to have it for work as well.TBI sees the iPhone having trouble in two of the biggest industries in the US. Government and finance are likely to keep favoring Research in Motion's BlackBerry, though Apple could take enough of the rest of the sectors to make up for what it misses. "The two industries we see as the least likely of switching from Blackberries are Finance and Government," says a TBI research note. "These are huge industries, but they make up only 20% of the total US workforce. That still leaves 80% of the total 150 million US workforce."
Meanwhile TBI sees iPhone adoption ramping-up aggressively in industries such as media, entertainment, hospitality, transportation, and consumer packaged goods.
TBI's report dovetails nicely with a report at the beginning of the month from Deutsche Bank analyst Chris Whitmore. Early in November, Whitmore said he expected to see 2 million iPhones in the enterprise market by the end of this year, giving Apple roughly 7% of the business end of smartphones in the US.
[via MacNN]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
David owens said 10:19AM on 11-24-2009
I just switched from ATT to Verizon. I now use a Blackberry Tour, and after owning an iPhone, I can say with authority it kind of sucks. Clumsy, tiny screen, and tiny keys-I make more typing errors with this thing then my iPhone.
I am praying for the iPhone on Verizon.
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Martin said 10:24AM on 11-24-2009
Our company just recently has authorized the 3GS for use on our network. But only the corporate employees (in management, naturally) can request one. The subsidiaries will have to wait.
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iBearTouch said 10:38AM on 11-24-2009
"The two industries we see as the least likely of switching from Blackberries are Finance and Government,"
Yeah... whaddaya expect from THE MAN. ^_^
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EdgyB said 11:55AM on 11-24-2009
Man, if Apple could come up with their own version of a Blackberry Enterprise Server for the iPhone, I think they'd just about kill the Blackberry (I've had 2 of them and really, really tried to love them).
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Dan Woods said 2:02PM on 11-24-2009
The iPhone's Mail, Contacts and Calendars bypass BES.
They also use open standards of CalDAV, CardDAV and IMAP (as well as MS Exchange) and can deal with multiple accounts elegantly.
Exchange >(Fetch)> BES >(Push)> Blackberry
Exchange >(Push)> iPhone
Depending on how your Mail Server is configured, iPhones may receive mail before Blackberrys.
Galley said 1:08PM on 11-24-2009
My iPhone would allow me to have instant access to training materials and other documents, but since it's not a company issued device, I'm not allowed to access the network.
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Jeff Hesser said 1:23PM on 11-24-2009
until our employees could use these phones without having to install iTunes on work machines we will NEVER get these for corporate use. Many users have them (myself included) but the company will only pay and support the 'approved' devices.
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Dan Woods said 2:08PM on 11-24-2009
Have your IT department roll out business-specific settings with the iPhone Configuration Utility when the Phone is issued, but allow the user the ability to sync their personal stuff (music, games, etc) with their home computer.
Rembert Oldenboom said 3:27PM on 11-24-2009
My clients would like to use the iPhone professionally but hesitate: tethering doesn't work yet with T-Mobile Netherlands and they do require this functionality. They won't like to go out with that internet USB stick again.
Furthermore, automated PPTP VPN connections are currently not supported, only LLTP is supported. That's also quite a show-stopper for Microsoft based businesses.
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JKT said 4:26PM on 11-24-2009
There is tons of room for iPhone growth in business. The problem is that Apple has no idea how to reach the higher ups in business to try to push the iPhone. I'm low-man on the totem pole at my company an their salespeople keep calling me. I'm like "No, I definitely do not have the power to switch us from Blackberry. If only." Apple's salesforce has no connections. They need to hire people who know people and use networking (the ethernet kind) to get into business. As it stands now though, they're going about it all wrong and need to wake up to the reality that their new "Apple Store For Business" ain't working.
(More evidence of that: the last time I requested a quote from them, I received a screen capture from store.apple.com that I could have done myself. It reflected none of our corporate discount nor was it an official quote on Apple letterhead that our purchasing dept. would accept. The "Apple Store for Business" is DOA with regard to efficacy.)
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JKT said 4:31PM on 11-24-2009
(Obviously I meant the NON-ethernet kind of networking. Sorry. Shouldn't post while sick.)
CecilP said 7:12PM on 11-24-2009
I've been a long time Black Berry user with a personal iPhone. I recently changed employers and now my iPhone is also my business device. The iPhone has a bot of catching up to the Black Berry before deeper market penetration can be achieved. I can not set an out of office message, recall a message, or assign a distinct sound for a specific contact on the iPhone. These are some of the features that allowed email to go mobile and the iPhone however evolutionary, lacks them.
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exNewt said 8:17AM on 11-25-2009
Don't need iTunes to install apps. You do need it to update but I guess "why not"
Also it's the preferred phone for DHS Department of Homeland Security as the 3GS encrypts on the fly as well as being the only phone that can tell you where it is (besides supporting remote wipe, etc.)
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ilo.vekdl said 6:28PM on 11-25-2009
Unfortunately, Blackberry security is still somewhat better than the iPhone, even the iPhone 3GS. To break into an iPhone 3GS, you can pull the SIM card (to disable network access and thus any efforts by the owner to remote wipe) and then use common Jailbreak tools to get at the data.
Blackberry devices can be set to auto-distruct if the go "x" days without network access. Arguably this is useless, trivial, dangerous, but some IT groups cite it as a security "weakness" of the iPhone 3GS.
More importantly, the "jailbreak" tools to break into an encrypted Blackberry are supposedly non-existent, and realistically less available than iPhone jailbreak tools.
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