What do iPhones have to do with Enterprises?

Good friend David Scott Lewis takes a jab in one of his comments below about all my recent iPhone posts.  So do most of my readers - the Infosys-Cap Gemini  post readership since Friday outnumber all those for my iPhone posts by more than 5 to 1.

So what do I continue to write about iPhones? What do they have to do with enterprises? Everything.

Mobile deployment is one of the hottest innovation areas in most of my corporate clients.  MS Windows Mobile is far more interesting to them than MS Vista today. To them, the iPhone may be a mildly interesting device in itself as an enterprise platform, but they are excited about the  applications it will likely spawn and the impact of its browser and other features on competing devices.

Secondly, the scrutiny on AT&T is just as important. As I wrote in Real Finance magazine last year (see attached) , for many families that connectivity utility is greater than all others - gas, electricity etc - put together. For many CIOs, telecoms cost more than all software, hardware and services put together. As SaaS related hosting, sensor telemetry, mobile apps, global travel grow, our telecom costs will likely explode. We are going to need much more scrutiny of our telecom vendors and their bills. And telecom taxes - some of the highest on any utility.

Download telecoms_real_finance_jun_06.pdf

Comments

[John]

Vinnie,

As usual, good stuff. For all intensive purposes, the iPhone is a consumer device. However as long as IT continues to allow individuals to use their personal mobile device for work purposes then added scrutiny of the iPhone from the enterprise crowd is more than justified.

As many have noted, there are plenty of devices that can do what the iPhone does and in the case of the enterprise, even better. However will they have the same market impact you mention, and be able to capture the imagination and interest of people like the iPhone launch? My guess is probably not.

John