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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."
I think that the Enterprise has better communicators than the iPhone already.
'Loose' is when your pants are three sizes too big. 'Lose' is when you misuse 'loose'.
I dont think businesses will care what it runs
I think businesses will be concerned with how it integrates with the things they need/do. Will it be able to open Office files? Will it be able to synchronize with Outlook? Does it make phone calls? Will it be able to synchronize contacts and such?
None of those should be beyond the capabilities of the phone... it is all just a matter of what actually is implemented (or implementable with minor work) when the phone is released.
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
which would make it difficult to dial while driving
That would be a "feature" not a "bug".
Please punch the first suit you hear complaining about that.
#!
Hum. I thought that you were not supposed to use a cell phone while driving because it distracts you from the more important task at hand which is guiding upwards of several tons of steel safely down the road without killing any one.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
Isn't it a little early to write this thing off as a business tool? Does anyone actually have one in their possession? Most of the executives with Crackberries use them for email, so I fail to see where the requirements for entry are real high. If the thing is deemed to be more of a status symbol than a Blackberry, executives will want it and it will be used as a business tool. AT&T might just be trying to keep it from being perceived as a toy, or "for kids". All it has to do is be a good email platform.
:)
That said, I'm skeptical that it will make a good email platform without a real keyboard
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
That is the smell & noise of the CEOs at Research In Motion, Palm, and Pocket PC, collectively soiling their pants after hearing this news.
I can throw as many stones as I wish; my house is made of transparent aluminum.
Implementing a horrible idea that is doomed to failure because they still think they're the only game in town? Cingular really is the new AT&T.
How does a 7-person democracy cut a pie? Into 4 pieces.
Here's an idea...Write a web app!
It's so ingenious, I'm going to patent it. :D
I imagine you'll be able to store files locally and if you can access them thru Safari on the phone, than just do that. If not, write some security and put it on an extranet.
I'm going to preface this by saying I'm not an Apple fanboy by any means and I'm definitely not buying an iPhone.
How did the RAZR succeed? By being a high priced toy to the wealthy at first. How did Blackberry succeed? By being a high priced email toy for business elites. The iPhone really combines both - a sleek design with email, web, and calendar built in. The downside is that it isn't compatible with Outlook.
But, for the low low price of $500, only the elitist of the elite will be able to afford it. And Apple will open it up for development if a large enough enterprise requests it. They want the marketshare and if a Wall Street Bank or Music Studio requests it, they'll do it to add to the cool factor of having those rich famous people carry it around - just like the RAZR and the Blackberry.
I recently purchased a pocketpc based phone device. I really toiled with waiting until the iPhone comes out and getting that, but I heard some pretty sadening news - that Apple/AT&T will only allow signed programs to be installed on the phone. Unless they make that a pretty simple process, which I can't imagine they will - this will severely limit access to developers and software other than Apple sanctioned devices.
This is the main downfall of the iPhone. I have no doubt it will be popular with home users as well as business users who use their devices solely for email/calling. It will be a status symbol. But unless they open their source and allow developers to really get into the nitty gritty, I don't see it becoming the "one device to rule them all".
1. Take grain of salt.
2. Read Gartner analysis.
3. Consume Ripple as required.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
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
One of the many reasons that Newton failed is the fact that it started out as a way to reinvent how we interact with computers, and then Apple decided to panic when they realised that the project could interfere with Mac sales, so they turned it into a Mac peripheral.
For iPhone, OTOH, Jobs took "Computer" out of the name of the company, so I don't think they are too worried about giving iPhone the room it needs to succeed...
Interesting that's third on the list of requirements for a mobile phone.
Best Slashdot Co
If businesses let employees pick their phones (and this is a choice) then they'll go for this nice phone. Who wouldn't.
The implication being that the Blackberry has done so well because of all of the corporate PCs and servers running the Blackberry OS?
If you look at the history of those two phone lines, you'll see why iphone doesn't have much of a chance. Blackberries were targeted to the enterprise from day 1. Sidekicks were focused on consumers. Despite high profile users such as Paris Hilton and others, Enterprises didn't ask for the ability to put apps on the sidekick. However, many non enterprise users have adopted the blackberry.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
It doesn't integrate with Exchange Server, it has a music and movie player, and it can operate as a hard drive. This isn't an "Enterprise" product, this is a consumer product. This should be marketed as a replacement for your phone and your iPod, not as something middle-management uses to interfere with the folks who do the real work.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
"...because enterprises won't be able to write applications for the phone."
It's too bad that companies can't write apps that run on websites.
It's too bad that the iPhone won't be able to browse websites with a fully-functional web browser.
Oh. Wait.
1. Companies write apps that run on websites.
2. The iPhone can browse websites with a fully-functional web browser.
3. This is the absolutely most airtime-intensive way to write applications.
4. PROFIT!
(for AT&T anyway)
Some companies learn lessons the hard way - by failing. Apple's had a number of large failures, but has managed to learn from those failures and make better things with higher margins.
Most companies in the tech industry can't handle more than one or two failures; they tend to go bankrupt. Those companies that survive product failures tend to try and forget about them instead of learn from them. For example, Microsoft could have learned a lot from Micrsoft Bob, if they so desired. Instead, they buried old Bob in the back and abandoned all attempts to do any radical user interface changes for Windows.
Apple, on the other hand, has a large number of failures to draw from, all of which are extensively documented. Apple also has a large number of successes, most of which probably haven't been documented enough. Why has the iPod really succeeded? Why and how has Mac OS X (and the Mac) been an unstoppable locomotive of progress?
The Enterprise market is smaller than you think, and requires substantial investments with questionable returns. Allowing developers onto your platform incurrs substantial support and infrastructure costs. Enterprise demands also tend to warp your perspective, as large accounts exert greater leverage on the development process than thousands of individuals. They also don't pay retail, and tend to demand substantial up-front and back-end discounts.
Apple has bypassed this in a simple manner, with a simple question: why have your enterprise apps on the phone when you have a live browser connection? If you can get to salesforce.com, google apps, and your custom web-enabled apps, who cares whether you can install a binary or not? In fact, not having to install anything is much better - no management issues. It's the freaking web, already. Everything that's important has been webified. Anything that isn't yet will be in 5 years. Everything that isn't nobody cares about.
The only "enterprise" feature of the iPhone would be the ability to hard-wire it to your corporate network instead of using the public network. That's it. If the iPhone can do that, then the internal IT guys can do the rest.
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."
They're baffled? Really?
So you're saying the CEO isn't gonna want one of these things? Please.
Also, you don't write applications that run *on* the iPhone... you write web applications that run in the *browser* that runs on the iPhone.
I can't believe Gartner is this clueless... I think someone at Apple forgot to pay them to gush.
Give me the choice of an iPhone and a plain black-and-white nokia bar-of-soap... I'll take the Nokia.
Look at the iPhone's battery life on apple.com.
Apply an adjustment for pre-release optimism.
Apply a reality adjustment - the only way to get listed standby times is to run your tests next to a tower.
You're gonna want two extra chargers, for the car and the office, because that's pitiful battery life even BEFORE you apply those adjustments.
From Apple's site:
iPhone features a rich HTML email client and Safari -- the most advanced web browser ever on a portable device -- which automatically syncs bookmarks from your PC or Mac. Safari also includes built-in Google and Yahoo! search. iPhone is fully multi-tasking, so you can read a web page while downloading your email in the background over Wi-Fi or EDGE.
(1)First Gen phone?
(2)little room for third party apps? Please provide a link with the specs that indicate that... Being an OSX platform, with most of the needed support in the built-in libraries, apps should be very small anyway.
(3) inherent security problems based off #1 - which is clearly wrong - thus making this point of yours as ludicrous as the rest.
(4)No EDGE support? Cant get high speed anything? Apple clearly states EDGE support, and 802.11b&g.
(5)No Outlook? What about web based? That will work on this phone.
(5)No Vista support? Says who? You? I doubt they will drop the ball on that one - even though Vista market penetration is minimal so far, they'll make sure it works with Vista just because soon Vista market penetration (through pre-installs) will be significant.
(6)Poorly designed UI in your opinion - I personally think it is equal to the others available out there, especially since it has a multi-touch screen - which other phones dont yet have.
(7)Cant get at the battery... if the battery is as easy and cheap to change as on the iPods that you "cant get at the battery", this too is a moot point.
(8)Cant change the SIM... not confirmed... as like many other phones, I think this will be dependant on the network the phone is being sold for. Just like when I bought my Treo - I had to look for one that even had a SIM slot so it would work with T-Mobile.
(9)OK, it wont get a virus... for a while.... and that is bad why? And with Apple's track record of support, when that does happen (based off your statement), that will be an issue why? Apple will have a patch, and probably (in my opinion) far quicker than MS usually does.
And Bluetooth 2.0 which a number of current phones are just starting to support (or dont yet fully support).
.
So, all in all, every point of yours is wrong, and whoever modded you didnt bother to check any of them. Oh well, they way of /.
Next time, learn something about what you post instead of posting FUD with no idea of what you are talking about. Just a thought/suggestion.
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
Dunno about the US but I'm almost certain that here in Europe the iPhone will be a big hit among the suits, especially early on when they're a curiousity and too expensive for most consumers. Never mind the features, it'll be a little status symbol and a bit of style you can buy. It's not like corporations have carefully weighed the pros and cons of all available cars and decided that only Mercedes, BMW and Audi have the features that suits need most, yet that's what 99% of them drive. As long as Apple can't bring down the price of the iPhone enough to make it a mass product like the iPod, it needs to target this market which will pay a premium for a prestige product. They would need a bigger range of iPhones then, and make sure the more expensive ones are visually distinguishable, to cater to the whole corporate hierarchy.
Like Blackberry and Good. We use Good at work. That would be sweet. Don't get me wrong, I love my Nokia E61, but an iPhone would be the cat's whiskers.
Just one comment:
""will it be fast enough.""
Picture something for me.
Picture the clouds opening up, and a booming voice from heaven:
"NO"
EDGE PDAs are disastrously bad. Anyone paying $500 for an EDGE pda with intent to use its internet functionality should get their head examined.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
I've said it before and I'll say it again: ActiveSync is an essential ingredient for the success of any smartphone device in the Enterprise market (and will eventually be the death knell for RIM). Even Palm has realized this with the addition of ActiveSync support in the Treo 650 and later. ActiveSync support is even more crucial now since Outlook Mobile Access (OMA) is not included in Exchange 2007. Nay-say MS all you want, but Enterprise customers live or die by groupware connectivity, and Exchange is the king of the hill right now.
*** Quantum Mechanics: The Dreams of Which Stuff is Made ***
For
enterprise
applicati-
ons, the
display
must be
able to
display
web pages
in a
usable
manner.
The iphone
needs high
resolution
of 800x480
minimum
like that
demoed by
Hitachi
and
Samsung.
Talking about EDGE in terms of bandwidth understates how bad it is.
The low bandwidth is a very small part of the problem with GPRS/EDGE. The bigger problem is latency; with the connection loaded (i.e. approaching 10 KBps) you tend to see 2000+ ms roundtrip ping times. While driving (as a passenger), I would see 15000+ ms round trip pings.
Can you imagine how painful it is to do anything online with a 15 second ping time?
Even with the connection virtually idle, and with ideal single strength, you'll see ping times in the 800-1200 ms range. This compares very poorly to EVDO Rev 0's 100-200 ms, and far worse to EVDO Rev A's 60-180 ms pings. Sprint has EVDO Rev A in many markets(40% or so) *now*, and plans a nationwide rollout by the end of 2007.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
Jobs just after the unveiling, said personally in an interview that the iPhone would be able to run third party apps - but they would be tightly controlled by Apple, there would not be an open SDK. If AT&T and Apple in combination are willing to solicit the construction of some enterprise apps, they could be bought by users and loaded as well.
However much of the need for third-party applications will be removed via the obvious step of the users ability to include Dashboard-like widgets created with Dashcode, something not announced but pretty obvious. If you can load your own custom web snippets, how many actual applications do you really need? Most people buy applications for devices to replace built-in programs that stink, but Apple has been pretty good at delivering good applications with systems that many people actually like using.
The iPhone is going to sneak up on the enterprise just the same way the Blackberry did, by a lot of corporate users owning them and demanding more enterprise support.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley