Apple Targeting Business World for the iPhone

The New York Times is running a couple of stories about the future of the iPhone in the business world and Apple's plan to maintain control of application development. Now that the iPhone SDK has been released and the "App store" has been demonstrated, Steve Jobs is pushing for the adoption of the iPhone as a standard business tool. In addition, a venture capitalist named John Doerr has launched a $100 million "iFund" to spur development of applications for the iPhone. From the NYTimes: "Mr. Jobs was upfront that there are limitations on what applications can do. He talked about bans on pornography and malicious programs. He also said Apple will not allow any application to be installed on the machine other than through the iTunes store. Nor will applications be permitted that enable an end run around Apple's deals with wireless carriers. Many questions remain unanswered. How much streaming video will Apple allow, because the iPhone is such an interesting video device? Mr. Jobs did say that the application development environment will have a lot of capabilities for video playback. Will Apple allow a service like Last.FM to offer streaming music on the iPhone?"

Comments

Two things: Exchange and AT&T

[edremy]

The iPhone will get nowhere in business until they gain compatibility with Exchange and lose AT&T.

My boss has an iPhone, and after seeing it I went and got a Samsung i760 instead. Why? I live on email, and forwarding everything to gmail just doesn't cut it. The calendaring functions in Exchange/Outlook are critical to a lot of businesses, and there's no mac or open source package that's anywhere close. Jobs needs to do some groveling at the feet of MS, since Entourage is a bad joke as well when it comes to calendaring and it really slows the uptake of Macs in the business world.

AT&T is the other reason. I can't even get service in my office on AT&T- Verizon has 3 bars. I've got a full 3G connection and the 760 is really pretty snappy on web pages. How's that EDGE thing working out?

Would I rather have an iPhone? Probably- it's smaller, lighter, has a better interface and looks a lot nicer. (Although the external keypad and keyboard on the 860 make up for a lot of that.) But there are a bunch of i760s in my department and only 1 iPhone.