The Apple iPhone becoming business-like

Implications: Beyond employee preferences, the Apple iPhone business upgrades will test how business managers and IT professionals can agree on mobile devices in standardization, management, and costs. 

Analysis: Apple’s launch of the business upgrades is more than addressing employee preferences and becoming “business-like”.  The challenge in the corporate market is business managers and IT professionals reconciling how to standardize and manage mobile devices at justified costs.  Apple has a market opportunity for the iPhone because more than half of employees purchase their devices at carrier-branded stores rather than through the business.  Research studies show that the majority of employees are combining personal and business usage.  Also, more than half of workers are accessing enterprise data, but only about one-third are getting support from their employer’s IT staff.  The discrepancy has been the different priorities of business managers and IT professionals. 
Business managers have embraced expense reimbursement to choose devices so that field workers could select the carrier with the best network in their territory and at home.  On the other hand, IT professionals have strived for standardizing the devices in order to launch e-mail and enterprise data applications.  And as offices upgrade to VoIP solutions, mobile devices can displace fixed-line phones.  Standardizing the type of device becomes cost-justified for both business results and IT management.  Applications can be initiated that impact partner and customer relationships such as Salesforce.com, Oracle’s CRM, or Cisco’s WebEx. Apple’s challenge will be how quickly to develop compelling applications and show the capability for 24 hour support of Microsoft’s Exchange.  Nokia is promoting its Mobile Device Management (MDM) to appeal to IT managers, and has an array of models to cover many carrier operators.  Although Steve Jobs pointed out at the January Macworld that the iPhone has 19.5% of the U.S. smartphone market share, RIM had 39% market share in 2007 according to Gartner, Inc.  RIM increased its quarterly projection of 1.82 million shipments by 15%-20%.  RIM just announced expanding the applications from Movidity, iEnterprise, and Oracle.  In this competitive space, can the iPhone business launch replicate the successful distribution by AT&T of about 2 million iPhones during the latter half of 2007?  Apple’s 2008 year-end target of 10 million iPhones will probably not only require more partnering with carriers in emerging consumer markets but also embracing businesses with cost-saving applications.