There has been a lot made of the corporate credentials of the iPhone and Android devices recently, but I just don’t get it. There is a reason why RIM dominates the corporate sector and it is not just the email platform it provides.
If I was buying smartphones for my company there is almost no choice outside of BlackBerry, and the reasons are many fold-
Battery life- without doubt the battery performance of BlackBerry devices are way ahead of the iPhone and Windows Mobile devices, but WM still does fairly well within the corporate sector. Symbian devices also have stupendous batteries on board and this has given them some anchorage within the corporate world.
Speed- the inclusion of hardware keyboards is seen by many corporate people as necessary when dealing with large volumes of emails. I’m not starting the whole hardware v software keyboard debate again, but it is a fact that many consider this to be the case (rightly or wrongly).
Contactable- corporations need to communicate with their staff all of the time, if possible, and call quality alongside a good battery help with this. So many smartphones have call quality and power too far down the specification list for them to do well in the business sector.
The fact is that many business people require the ‘phone’ part to be a significant factor in a smartphone yet most smartphones forgo this in favour of big screens and lots of apps. The focus on new features to capture the consumer market often gets in the way of building hardware that does the job for seriously busy people. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, there is a huge flaw in the iPhone and Android model at this time which if addressed could make one of them the biggest smartphone platform of them all.
Here’s an example- RIM sells many more smartphones than Apple and is a competitor that is easily exploitable because the OS looks outdated and is not as flexible as it could be. If Apple released two iPhones this year, one for consumers and one for business, it could clean up. The business centric model would have a much better battery life, a hardware keyboard (not completely necessary, but preferred by many) and a leaning towards better call quality and more business orientated features.
If the above could be achieved I would be a business iPhone user in a snap and so would many others. It would take time for the move from BlackBerry to happen in a big way because it is so entranced at the moment, but this seems to be an obvious target market to me. Have I missed something here or do you feel that the current iPhone is capable of doing well in the corporate sector? If you do, explain to me why not one person I know at work or within the customers I deal with uses an iPhone for business. Strangely, many of them own an iPhone for personal use…
My brother-in-law’s company did buy everyone an iPhone but now that the contract is up for renewal they are looking at something else. Not sure what though. One issue was call quality.
Whenever I am talking to anyone with an iPhone I ask them how they like the virtual keyboard. Most either tell me they don’t really like it or it’s alright. I don’t know whether that is representative of the majority of people. By contrast if I ask Blackberry people they all say that they love the keyboard.
So I think you are probably right. An iPhone with a hardware keyboard would probably sell in droves.
We have Blackberrys at work but lots have iphones for personal use as well. Got to agree, the Blackberry is great for just getting me through work and the iphone is great for other stuff. The Blackberry doesn’t entertain me and the iphone cannot do days on end without recharging and I could not use it for constant email because of the keyboard.
Quote:
Contactable- corporations need to communicate with their staff all of the time, if possible,
exactly the reason why a Blackberry is the phone of Satan, you become a slave to your employer, expecting you to answer emails anytime. BB also gives rise to arthertic thumbs, people with no newspaper, no book just twirling the scroll wheel on the train looking for an email to re-read.
Shaun, I have been reading this site since clieworld and I really think you need to get over your obsession with the BB or complaints about PIM’s. I have gone from Palms and Clie’s to two winmo devices a HTC Tytn (not bad) HTC touch a POS, an now iPhone. I think ppl are losing the focus here, smartphones are PHONES, that have some extra functionality not computers with a phone tacked on. perhaps you need to revist the OPD One Per Desk….. from ICL.
I think if Apple made the sort of business phone you describe, it wouldnt be an iPhone. iPhones are all about consumption, a business phone has to be about communication. I have lots of small company clients that *want* iPhones, but *know* they need a business phone and usually I end up getting them Nokia E71′s for all the reasons you mentioned. Trouble is, the world is moving to big touch screens and you can’t have that and good battery life or, I’d argue, good signal. (I’ve never found a device with a touch screen that gets as good a signal as a non touch device sitting right next to it)
actually my employee gave out iphones throughout head office, the senior managers love them, great toys..
I declined one
“explain to me why not one person I know at work or within the customers I deal with uses an iPhone for business. Strangely, many of them own an iPhone for personal use…”
Because they’re stuck with the junk that some IT guy thinks is good for them.
Apple closed the gap to RIM to just 5 percentage points last year, and I’m betting the gap will be even narrower this year.
“Apple closed the gap to RIM to just 5 percentage points last year, and I’m betting the gap will be even narrower this year.”
It’s a different gap- my point is that Apple is not closing the corporate gap (at least I am presuming it isn’t). Small changes and it would…
Corporations will adapt to and embrace the iPhone over time. There’s no need to compromise the design of the iPhone or Apple’s overall strategy to gain wide acceptance.
Joel’s post said it all:
“actually my employee gave out iphones throughout head office, the senior managers love them…”
My wife’s company, which employs 60,000 people worldwide, is also looking at moving away from the locked down model it uses at the moment. Under the new system, people would be able to use any phone they wanted to access their email, contacts etc.
I think the iPhone is already doing very well in small business, and it won’t be long before big corporations start to wake up, too.
My brother in law got in iPhone from his work. But I don’t think they have anything in particular in mind for them. They have a provider, and he pretty much gets to choose his phone, or he gets the same one his boss likes. As long as it does voice (duh) email and Internet they’re happy.
Could Blackberries be more popular because you can control them. I remember you got one from work Shaun, and you couldn’t install anything onto it etc. because it was locked down through work. Would this mean that you pretty much only use it for work purposes instead of surfing the web at your leisure, listening to music and watching films or playing with farting apps during work time on a work phone?
Very good point- the ability to lock down a BB helps companies a lot and this is another factor. I can still listen to music, watch films etc., but cannot install third party apps.
Of course I could remove the IT policy, install all the apps I need and then resync it with the work server and the apps would stay on there. But I would never do that;)
For the last three years I’ve deployed Windows Mobile devices to end users. Why? Control, choice and ease of deployment. Ultimately the decision to go WinMo over Blackberry was based around the additional expense (at the time) and layers of complexity required by the BES. Conversely I have a colleague who works in education who previously deployed Nokia Symbian devices and switched to iPhones out of frustration at the complexity of the Nokia configuration process (and has since become the world’s #1 iPhone fanboi!)
I’ve had no complaints from the users who have Windows Mobile phones, they’re probably not using them for anything more than email, calendars and calls but then as a business that’s all we want them to use. To be considered suitable as a business tool Apple will need to give up control of the iPhone to IT departments who would remove large chunks of unnecessary functionality, which would make me wonder why you’d choose an expensive iPhone over a much cheaper WinMo or Blackberry device in that case?
“Corporations will adapt to and embrace the iPhone over time. There’s no need to compromise the design of the iPhone or Apple’s overall strategy to gain wide acceptance.”
Sorry, but I don’t see that happening at all unless changes are made.
“Joel’s post said it all:
“actually my employee gave out iphones throughout head office, the senior managers love them…””
To quote the whole comment- “actually my employee gave out iphones throughout head office, the senior managers love them, great toys..”
It doesn’t matter if Joel or anyone else thinks they’re toys, the fact remains that they were provided to senior mananagement and that they loved them.
My neighbour is a senior IT guy in the commercial department for a very large pharmaceutical firm, currently trialing the iPhone. He has been inundated by requests from people who have heard about it and who want in. They see huge potential for the device in the field in terms of data access/capture.
Yes, but senior management won’t do much during the day so…:)
The data capture bit is interesting and the iPhone is very well placed for that. I still can’t get my head around a large company with a workforce of managers who want to be connected and available choosing anything but BlackBerry. The main point I am making is not dissing the iPhone, but that it needs some tweaks to appeal more to large corporates. Apple could do it, but maybe it doesn’t want to and ultimately doesn’t need to capture that market.
It didn’t really try to enter the corporate desktop market, but ironically IT depts would have a much easier time with Macs than PCs- I guess price and the fact that Windows got a stranglehold so early dictated that one.
“Shaun, I have been reading this site since clieworld and I really think you need to get over your obsession with the BB or complaints about PIM’s. I have gone from Palms and Clie’s to two winmo devices a HTC Tytn (not bad) HTC touch a POS, an now iPhone. I think ppl are losing the focus here, smartphones are PHONES, that have some extra functionality not computers with a phone tacked on.”
It’s not an obsession (honest:)) Having a good PIM does not turn a phone into a computer. Having a camera, video streaming, games and all the rest turns them into computers. My main annoyance comes down to how easy it would be to implement, not that the BB is better at this particular function.
The reason I called them toys (maybe a bit harsh) is at the end of the day even though over a hundred were given out, the reason was because it is the ‘next big thing’ and very senior staff wanted it done (as they are cool) so IT did it…
From an IT point of view it wasn’t done becuase they are more secure or easier for us to work in with exchange.. Actually there are some serious security issues with the 3g (I think 3gs is better), but the executive team wanted it done, so it wsa done.
It wasn’t done as it is the most maintainable or secure choice, it was a personal desire by some very senior staff.
We also have a number of in house applications on mobile devices, now that has become a nightmare, development times are much higher for the iphone than windows mobile (using the .net framework).
You should pick a platform that does what you need, not because it’s cool. I get asked for super fast ultra light, cool laptops and desktops all the time, but if it’s not needed for the job at hand, then no chance. Any IT department that panders to the whims of it’s wannabe cool users is asking for trouble.
I can almost see the case for an iPhone in a vertical application, much like I could for tablet PC’s but I bet it would be simpler with WM and it’s already good connections to the enterprise.
The iPhone is a media centric consumer device and should be kept the he’ll away from business systems.
Not least for it’s crap keyboard! He’ll / hell
Unfortunately David going against the whims of the company directors is probably also asking for trouble..