The Apple iPhone (Enterprise) Edition Bundle Shouldn’t Exist
Okay this sounds like either desperation from the sales team at AT&T, or a cunning ploy to make sure that crates of iPhones are bought by businesses who won’t look as deeply as the ticket price as a regular consumer. InfoWorld reports that the network will be pitching the upcoming iPhone as appealing to business users.
There’s obviously a business case for AT&T to sell as many of these devices as possible – and that’s without seeing the contract they have with Apple, which is probably be going to unlike any other supplier contract they have – but from what we publicly know about the iPhone it’s not going to be suitable.
First of all, there’s no Microsoft compatible word processor, spreadsheet, or presentation application. Sure there are some viewers announced for the email client, but from experience on various Symbian, Palm and Pocket PC systems the ability to edit documents is vital to a systems’s business success. As is a good interface with any corporate email systems. I’ve not seen any docuemntation on this beyond a tie-in with Yahoo.
And of course, the iPhone is not an open system, there is no way to program and distribute third paty applications, which could concievably have picked up the slack and the enterprise requirements. While the iPhone is going to be a very nice product, it’s not a super smartphone device – it’s a video ipod with the added benefit of a mobile phone and internet connectivity. That doesn’t make a ginat killer. It will allow Apple to get in and experience the market (much as Nokia did with the gaming market and the N-Gage), but this is not the model to sell 10 million units by Christmas 2008.
Prejudging something before you have your hands on it is only used to control the market, maybe at&t knows something you do not know. I am not a fan boy of the Iphone but do see it changing how the different carriers can be stop as what you will buy. With the n95 carriers have striped the voip and made a lame reason for doing it so that they can increase thier profits.
Maybe the fact that it’s not open (not that I think that will hold for a long time) is just the reason why they deem it a business phone?
Wayne, certainly on the clsoed system and the email options these have been confirmed by Steve Jobbs and reported by various organisations. Those are givens on the first gen iPhone. By the same ‘prejudice’ then the fanboys and ‘iphone will change the world’ should wait till they get their hands on it. Unfortunatly the world of spin an PR put paid to that idea.
U fully agree the carriers are crazy to strip down teh N95, the E61, the HTC devices, etc, etc.
Frank, could be, but I think Businesses will want at least some integration with Lotus Notes, MS-Exchange or a Blackberry enabled server.
who can tell me when i can order the iphone in europe?
Try the contact page at http://www.apple.com.
Seriously, no partners are annoucned yet, it’s unlikely to be in the non-US Apple Stores, you’re realistically looking at Q4 with a contract on a second tier network carrier.