Summary
The iPhone will cross seamlessly from personal to business use. Microsoft will develop for it and at that point, the best-designed handset with the best software combination will be able to win.
Analysis
Antone Gonsalves original InformationWeek article implies that iPhone will encounter difficulty entering the business market and especially notes "it will take at least six months before it reaches parity with RIM's BlackBerry". Six months is a short amount of time, so this belief is actually a great statement for a device that is 1 year old.
There have been very few technical issues with the iPhone and this is an amazing accommplishment. As time goes on and its capabilities widen, business confidence will increase in the iphone. Although historically enterprise customers only trust Microsoft this is changing rapidly.
A Fortune article today indicates that Microsoft is diving into the SDK. You bet they are. The iPhone is a platform, and one that is opening up the handset for the first time on this scale. The music got it into your pocket. The selection of apps will get it into your business life. I have to disagree with the original article that "One deficiency Apple will have to address is its lack of a large corporate sales force". I don't think that was ever their goal.
This is version 1 of the iPhone. Through design changes and the flood of software that will be written for it, some of the best run businesses may adopt it as a platform of choice. Once you can easily cross platforms with these advanced apps, it's just a platform. Wait, there's more - get ready for GPS and a whole new generation of users that expect miracles from the small screens.
