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AT&T to Target iPhone to Enterprise
narramissic writes "AT&T is reportedly preparing to market the iPhone to business users and is scurrying to ensure that its backend enterprise billing and support systems will accommodate the device when it ships. Analysts are baffled by the move. In addition to running an OS X-based operating system, which enterprises may be reluctant to adopt, the iPhone is also expected to have a number of shortcomings for business users, including not having a removable battery and not having buttons, which would make it difficult to dial while driving says Gartner's Ken Dulaney. Avi Greengart, principal analyst for mobile devices at Current Analysis, also thinks the iPhone won't be a good option for enterprise customers because enterprises won't be able to write applications for the phone."
All the iPhone will need to do is:
Connect to a POP / IMAP Email system (it does).
Read PDF files. The image zoom functionality will work fine for reading PDFs.
Then on the backend, the iPhone uses will get a special email account where all Office attachments are automatically converted to a PDF file before being sent to the phone.
Fairly trivial thing to do.
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIII
Yeah, that last one was kinda sarcasm and kinda not... most businesses I have worked for want to know
-Can it receive and send text messages easily?
-Does it make phone calls (easily)? (Yep, it is a phone)
-Can it sync with our email system?
-Can it open the occasional document sent to it?
Some businesses want more collaborative features, but the fact is, they are rarely used in most corporate environments. To that end though, with a full featured web browser (as also discussed on /. before), the possibilities are endless there without too much work - and since many companies are web enabling their stuff, most will see no additional work to make their stuff work on an iPhone. The ones that will are those that use MS (or MS partner) Proprietary solutions like Siebel (which though it is quite powerful, outright sucks anyway).
All in all, I think the iPhone may be the next killer phone.
-Correct form factor (ie: smaller and more comfortable to carry than a Treo or most SmartPhones)
-High level of functionality from full web browser to extensibility via widgets and other apps
-Support from a company that is second to none (other than perhaps IBM that they generally rate roughly equal to)
-Stable, proven platform... no hard resets, soft resets
-Synchronizable with Macs and PCs
-Intuitive interface
-shiny!!! (no, not joking on this one... many tech decisions are based on the eye-candy factor even though they shouldnt be).
-Investment protection in having a phone built on a hardware and software platform that will allow tomorrows (and even the next day's) latest apps and widgets to run on it.
Just my 12 cents.
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
From the summary: Analysts are baffled by the move.
From a 2001 article on the just-introduced iPod: A big yawner, you say? Perhaps. After all, there are plenty of MP3 players out there. (Compaq Computer (CPQ), for example, offers one for $149.99 on its Web site.) But while Apple's latest debut might not score high on the significance meter -- particularly according to Wall Street analysts hoping for a splashier announcement -- it does offer a glimpse into the tactics computer makers are beginning to employ as demand for their core products wanes. When it comes to Apple, if the analysts can't make heads or tails out of a new product, it's almost certain the product will sell. Usually when you've caught the analysts off-guard, you've moved to an area of consumer savvy marketing that has a life all it's own.
A friend in the EDA industry who has been marketing these tools for twenty years notes that analysts are consistently wrong about the marketability of new products in established markets - he says: "those who can't sell, analyze."