The iPhone Goes Corporate

I have heard iPhone critics say that although it is an outstanding consumer device, the iPhone is just not ready for business.  They have implied that corporate email and software are best used on a Blackberry.

There are many aspects of the iPhone that not only make it suitable for corporate use, but superior.

First, it brings all the advantages of a well designed, user friendly, smartphone, including mobile access to email, web, IM, calendar and business applications.  You might say that all the smartphones offer this, but some simple statistics show that the iPhone does it better.  According to AdMob, the iPhone accounts for over 50% of mobile traffic, despite only having about 2% market share on mobile phones.  This shows that iPhone users are much more likely to use their phones for use on the web. 

Second, the iPhone has a well designed Software Development Kit or SDK.  This refers to the the development environment and coding frameworks that allow a programmer to develop software for the iPhone.  Although detractors quickly state that is done in Objective C, and its syntax is quite different from most modern programming languages, its primary strength is that once you learn it, you can develop highly interactive software with very few lines of code.  This means businesses can build extremely intuitive and interactive mobile software that interacts with its corporate networks, for a fraction of the cost.

Next, the iPhone has an App Store that few rivals can dream of.  More and more business oriented software crops up there every day.  According to Forrester Research, Apples App Store had over 2.5 billion app downloads in 2009. The rest of the industry combined only did 16 million. This shows that iPhones users are much more likely to install and use mobile software on their phones.  Thanks to the app store, mobile software is effortless to download, and the iPhone alerts you with a small red badge when apps you have installed have been updated.  This means businesses have a way of deploying software accross their enterprise in record time.

Finally, lets talk email.  I know many Blackberry users rave about their email, but I have failed to see someone not give Apple the win when seeing their features side by side.  For one thing, the iPhone does not require a subscription or a special dedicated server for integrating with Microsoft Exchange.  Like other smartphones, the iPhone ties into the web interface built in to Exchange and it takes seconds to set up.  I have seen seasoned IT professionals take weeks setting up the link between Exchange and the Blackberry server.

The iPhone is affordable, user friendly, and opens up new avenues of software creation and deployment.  If there is a downside, it is simply that they are too much fun to use.  From an IT professional's point of view, if you tell your employees that they must use a complicated piece of software, but only provide them with a sub-par computer to do it on, you are not likely to have a successful adoption of the software.  However, if you tell them they must use the software on a platform and device that is a pleasure to use, your chances of adopting the new technology and making a positive impact on the bottom line just went up.

Better dress your iPhone in a suit, because it about to take over your office.

Disclosure:  Our construction company is rapidly deploying iPhones accross our Management Team and Jobsite Supervision because the devices are just so effective.  We have started building software for the iPhone simply because it is easy to use, deploy, and it is always at our employee's side.