Survey: Crackphone Gaining On Crackberry in Enterprise Space
by John Paczkowski
Posted on November 9, 2007 at 1:56 PM PT
Though Apple hasn’t yet unveiled, or perhaps even developed, its strategy for integrating the iPhone with business software systems in a way that won’t give IT executives aneurysms, its plans to bring the device to the enterprise market appear to be going quite well. This in spite of dubious security folk and leery analysts like Gartner’s Ken Dulaney who once said: “We’re telling IT executives to not support it because Apple has no intentions of supporting (iPhone use in) the enterprise. This is basically a cellular iPod with some other capabilities and it’s important that it be recognized as such.”
Thing is, Apple likely does intend to support the iPhone in enterprise, and even if it doesn’t, a lot of people plan to use it there anyway. According to new research from IDC, 70% of the people who own or are planning to buy an iPhone intend to use the device as a business tool. “The results of our poll suggest a preference for both personal and business usage among those that own or plan to purchase an iPhone in the next 12 months,” said Sean Ryan, research analyst for IDC’s Mobile Enterprise Device Solutions. “This coincides with a growing trend in the proliferation and uptake of other converged mobile devices designed to meet both the business and consumer requirements of mobile workers.”
Like it or not, the iPhone is being “user pushed” into the enterprise space. As Mark Blowers, senior research analyst at Butler Group, noted this past summer, “With remote working becoming more popular, there will be increasing pressure on the IT department to integrate a growing number of different mobile devices with the existing infrastructure. The iPhone could well be another BlackBerry that the IT manager will be compelled to adopt.”
