Posted on Thursday, June 21 2007 @ 0:26 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
Wall Street Journal
has an article on the adoption of the iPhone by corporates. They say that for now, not many businesses plan to sync them with internal e-mail systems because the iPhone isn't compatible with technologies from Research In Motion, Microsoft or Good Technology (Motorola).
That means many iPhone users won't be able to directly send and receive messages through their corporate email systems, although they may be able to forward their work emails through a third-party service like AOL or Yahoo Mail.
All this may change later this month when Apple plans to unveil the iPhone. According to a person close to Apple, the company is expected to fight for this market, currently dominated by players like BlackBerry's RIM, Palm Inc. and, increasingly, Nokia Corp. and Motorola. If Apple comes up with an acceptable strategy for integrating with business software systems, many companies might change their tunes.
Apple's plan to go after the business market represents a shift for the company, which has never been a strong player in corporate technology. In recent years its focus on the consumer market has accelerated with its products like the iPod and its effort to open a broad network of retail stores.
The initial plans of many companies to snub the iPhone will likely come as a disappointment to many consumers who are eager to substitute the iPhone for the multiple devices they carry around for music, cellphone and both corporate and personal email services. These users may put pressure on business technology departments to support iPhones even if that means incurring additional expense and changing their policies..
