“Some corporate customers are using the Apple iPhone in place of ‘smartphones’ such as Research in Motion Ltd.’s BlackBerry and other devices that have long track records among business users. Some are even tapping into business-centric applications for tracking inventory and accounting. Business software makers such as NetSuite Inc. and Salesforce.com Inc. are marketing their applications to iPhone users and, in some cases, modifying software so it works more smoothly on Apple’s device,” Nick Wingfield reports for The Wall Street Journal.
“Brian Keare, chief operating officer of Circle of Friends LLC, a maker of hair-care and bath products for children in Santa Monica, Calif., is one customer using the iPhone for business. Though he bought it primarily to make phone calls, write emails and use the iPod entertainment functions, he decided to test the limits of the iPhone’s Web browser by logging onto NetSuite, where his small company’s sales, accounting and other records are kept,” Wingfield reports.
“To Mr. Keare’s surprise, it worked flawlessly, allowing him access to all of his company information on the go. He had previously had no luck accessing NetSuite, with its complicated design, from the browser on a Blackberry or Palm Inc.’s Treo. ‘They choked on the Web pages,’ he said,” Wingfield reports. “‘It’s proving to be useful enough we’re really going to take advantage of it and use it as a business tool,’ said Mr. Keare, who has stopped using his Treo.”
“Salesforce.com said its Web site currently works on the iPhone, and that it is modifying its software to more effectively display the site through the iPhone browser. Zimbra Inc., which makes a Web-based competitor to Microsoft Corp.’s Outlook email, calendar and contacts program, expects to offer a version of its software tailored to the iPhone next month,” Wingfield reports.
“Adam Gross, vice president of developer relations at Salesforce.com, believes the iPhone will follow the path of other technologies with consumer roots, like the Web browser and Adobe Systems Inc.’s Flash animation software, that were ultimately embraced by businesses. ‘I think the iPhone absolutely is going to have a big impact on mobile business applications,’ he said,” Wingfield reports.
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Nick L.” for the heads up.]
I will buy one when I can receive an attached file via e-mail on the iPhone and copy it from the iPhone to my computer.
Yes! I knew it. The crummy Blackberry or Treo ain’t got nothin’ on the iPhone!
The best iPhones are yet to come.
Hang on, children!
“TheloniousMac, Calling TheloniousMac, one order of crow is waiting for you!”
Side effect: those sites will work better on Safari in Leopard too. Smart move, Steve..
Oh… if only I owned more than a handful of shares of AAPL. No matter. I’ll make a nice little bit of “change” in due time, and it will pay for a future laptop and whatever else I might want.
david
The way the iphone is set up the file is already on your computer.
duh!!!!!!!!!! I am a moron and say stuff that make me feel smart……..
Uh, yeah they do. They let me use my Exchange data.
Magic word: needs
As in, “I needs to be able to get to my contacts and calendar, even if Apple doesn’t understand that.”
This is truly excellent news. Yet another reason for me to purchase when the iP lands on UK shores.
@David:
The iPhone syncs with email on your computer and thus the file you wish to transfer is probably already there. If it is to a non-sync’d computer, you can email it. If it is to a non-sync’d computer NOT connected to the internet, then you are stuck, but who even uses those anymore?
Wrong, wrong, wrong, a thousand times wrong. The iPhone doesn’t run Windows, so it couldn’t possibly be a tool for business. Plain and simple. The iPhone is like those MAC toys Apple makes. They’re cute little dumbed-down Windows knock-offs for kids and the grandparents. Lazy people who don’t want to help family members and friends with computer issues recommend them.
Good luck doing REAL work in the REAL world with one of those things. I’d like to see you make the “Your Mom Doesn’t Work Here So Pick Up After Yourselves” sign for the breakroom on an iPhone. For that you need Microsoft Word. On Windows.
Your potential. Our passion.™
It’s always the same damn two companies whenever I see an article about the iPhone and businesses.
Hmmmmm… NetSuite.
palm is dead… RIMM has a network and loyal customers. i own AAPL shares and find owning RIMM wudv been a better play… i own a blackberry, awesome fone. but iPhone…iʻm jus too cheap to put that kinda money down for 1.0 version.
I’m with Zune Tang on this one. It is well known that Apple can only do creative stuff, not “word processy” stuff, like typing.
I know, iPhone has a virtual keyboard. But, because it is not a physical keyboard, you have to LOOK at it. That means I could not keep up a text message conversation and write e-mails while driving.
Plus, I read that they really didn’t sell that many iPhones.
@ david
If you knew how to properly set up your email, you’d choose IMAP, which keeps the messages on the server. All devices accessing your account (computers, iPhone, etc.) simply sync with the server.
The iPhone is not the limitation here. Your knowledge is.
@ DRM sucks
Please stay off our public roads. You’re a safety risk.
sync my contacts and calendar?
as a “no”.
Yep, the Blackberry and Treo are hard as hell to sync to the Mac. iPhone, piece of cake.
Zune Tang, you are a Blog Whore. Pure and simple.
http://www.samanthaburns.com/
“If you build it, they will come.”
I sync my Blackberry to my Mac all the time. I have no idea what you’re talking about.
Treo, no clue. I wouldn’t own one so I don’t know.
But my Blackberry syncs OTA to the company’s Exchange Server just fine and syncs with my Mac just fine. If the iPhone were as flexible I’d have one in a heartbeat. And I have every confidence that Apple with eventually either license ActiveSync or RIM will write a version of Blackberry Connect and the problem will be solved.
I doubt very seriously many so called “businesses” will be switching to the iPhone. It is anything but a business device. E-mail on the Edge network is just too freaking slow. The problem is that with a Blackberry, e-mail is pushed so the user is unaware of how long it takes to download. With the iPhone you are painfully aware of every freaking rotation of that silly wheel while waiting for some useless piece of spam before you get to your actual e-mail.
Users of the iPhone must conform to it’s paradigm shift. The iPhone is so rigid and locked up that it can’t adjust to the needs of a user.
It’s just too slow for someone on the go.
One of my clients, a lawyer, bought 3. He handed them back to me this morning and told me to “figure out what to do with these things.”
In addition, there are some e-mail servers out there that the iPhone just does not like.
I had to “adjust” to the iPhone to make it acceptable for my purposes as well. I did this by moving my domain to Yahoo because I noticed that it constantly hung when downloading e-mail from my previous domain host but was fairly quick when access mail via Yahoo.
Exchange server access is based on luck, near as I can tell.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it until Apple releases a workable smartphone with features comparable to even a horrible Windows Mobile Device. The iPhone is a proof of concept device. It is not ready for business, not yet. Apple needs to send some iPhone developers around with crackberry fanatics to see what the competition is all about.
With business it ain’t about pretty. Everyone agrees this phone sure is pretty, the UI sure is great, but in use the phone is too slow and it hangs up to often.
You NEED to be able to delete groups of e-mail at a time. You NEED to not be tethered to the Internet to use the device. Web based applications are a joke and no one is seriously going to adopt that. Even with WiFi web based apps are slow and tedious on the iPhone.
Not to mention the fact that it just makes the phone insecure. (I told you guys that the first hack tot he iPhone would be through Safari also, and it was done exactly the way I said it would be done.)
Developers need to be able to build clients that talk to specific databases to prevent hacking.
You can write a page of information about all the things that are neat about the iPhone. You can write volumes on what it’s lacking though.
David, what would prevent you from copying an attachment from an email on you PC from the email program on your PC? Email you get on the iPhone is not limited only to the iPhone. Typically you are accessing an email account you already have and are able to access from a PC. Why would you need to download an attachment from an email on you iPhone if you already have the attachment in an email that you can access from you PC already? You are thinking backwards. You must have a lot of experience with Windows.
What most people do not get about the iPhone is that it’s a device that basically for INFORMATION RETRIEVAL and not for (that much) input. Although you can use it for inputing text for a URL, or e-mail or text messaging, I just wouldn’t use it for that much input, myself. Obviously, it’s also to send/receive calls.
Don’t take the bait from the PeeCee Weiner flamers. It’s a wonderful device for business use.
I’m with dd: “Oh… if only I owned more than a handful of shares of AAPL”.
That said, I’m pleasantly surprised – even astonished – how fast this thing is penetrating the business world. Heck, it hasn’t been out even 30 days and we’re already seeing early adoptions, applications optimized, and extended functionality. All this without the benefit of “early access”, development tools, etc. This is just phenomenal.
What are you going to do with the attachment anyway? Open it? In what?
Attachments are the least of the problems with iPhone e-mail.
@DRM sucks
You know that Zune Tang ain’t for real, he’s just joking. Pretending to be a MS troll.
And for writing SMS while driving; Do sleep on the wheel or drive eyes closed too?
You’re exactly right except when you get to the place where you say it’s a wonderful device for business.
It’s not meant to do the things that businesses need. Not yet anyway. If I can’t sync OTA to Exchange including contacts and calendars, it can’t do what I need. If I can’t SEND information, it can’t do what I need. I’m sure it sends and receives calls splendidly, just like my Blackberry (which accepts inputs just fine) does at 1/3 the price.
It might eventually be a fantastic business phone. Right now, not so much.
Don’t get me wrong. I am pulling for this phone and searching for ways to make it useable to clients.
I can’t convey how many business clients I have that were excited and anxiously awaiting the iPhone.
Once they get it though, they wind up disappointed. I show them that once I learned to trust the error correction on the keyboard I can type just as fast as I could on the Blackberry, but it all comes down to how flakey e-mail is.
As one client (record producer) said yesterday, “I am underwhelmed.”
I advised several people not to get iPhones, but they went ahead.
One woman, a Business Affairs Attorney calls me every freaking day, “It’s not downloading my e-mail.”
We have to wipe the settings, and put them back in. This is her second iPhone.
The Blackberry is so freaking reliable in comparison, I use it as a network monitor. I have servers send status info to my blackberry every morning. If it’s not there, I know to go look at those servers first.
With the iPhone, I better just go look cause there’s no telling if the e-mail got through or not.
And what’s up with all the e-mail that says, “This message was not downloaded” or whatever the error is. No one can seem to figure those out.
I dunno.
Since I shifted everything to Yahoo, my experience with the device is improving, but when people ask me if they should buy one I say, “Let’s talk about your tolerance for very new technology.”
Maybe you think you’re paying or paid less for a blackberry but your carrier subsidized the initial cost to you, locked you into a higher priced 24 month contract to make up the difference if you want to use that blackberry to it’s full functionality. Figure $20 per month minimum of your plan cost goes to the cost of the phone, that’s $480 over plus $150 for a Sprint based blackberry or $300 for a verizon based blackberry. Put the Iphone on a credit card and you’re way ahead of the game. Sprint charges $50 a month for just blackberry email service, add another $60 per month for a 450 minute a month voice plan. Verizon charges $80 per month for a 450 minute per month plus data plan. These blackberrys have a memory expansion slot (so I think 4Gig might be the most available in micro SD) and they can be used as modems for laptops. The Iphone comes with up to 8Gig of flash and can almost do 90% of what you would do with a laptop in transit. As the software and applications evolve the Iphones will remain relevant well past the initial contract whereas the blackberry you thought you go such a bargain on will have a pitted case a scratched beyond recognition plastic LCD cover and retired to dust with no resale value. Fours years from now you will probably see used 8Gig Iphones on the market for $125 – $150 . Apple products are usually built to last and retain value. How mush do you think you’ll get for a scratched up irrelevant blackberry 4 years from now? Oh yeah with what Verizon charges for a 450 minutes and unlimited data I get 900 minutes and unlimited data plus rollover of which I have a rolling 3500 minute stockpile .
One glowing review from a man who actually doesn’t have a job. He’s a trust fund baby with lots of money and basically doesn’t do anything… but he loves his new iPhone:
“…Dear ‘TheloniousMac’:
My iPhone activation has been completed. Wow! What a tremendous mini-computer/comm devise this is! I can’t tell you how happy I am with this phone. I can actually use it. Read e-mails, retrieve news off the internet, and also manipulate text to make it more visible. This is a great feature for me considering my vision difficualties at close distances. Anyway, it’s awsome! One question…How do I download QuickTime Player and Flash on this phone. Our family website won’t show up properly.
I shall await your response…
Thank you….”
Even if your (somewhat convoluted) logic is accurate, the fact remains that the Blackberry does what I need for it to do, first time every time.
The iPhone can’t at any price.
I hope Apple works with RIM or Good or someone to deliver an experience as reliable and as complete as the Blackberry, because I really want some of the things the iPhone has to offer. Until they do, the thing simply doesn’t and can’t work for me.
Reliability and completeness of features are pretty to me, not the box they come in.
@scatterling, coolfactor, f.leghorn:
Thanks for the comments. I am traveling for work in places where I have cell phone access, but not WiFi or any type of internet access. It would be nice if somebody could e-mail me an attached file on the iPhone, for example a small computer program, that gets modified on my Mac and sent back and forth for troubleshooting purposes. Same idea for reviewing and editing documents, or whatever. Alternatively, I would like to be able to connect the Mac to the internet using the iPhone as a modem. Other phones have this capability.
Once a critical mass of iPhones is out there, things will change.
MS Exchange will be fixed to work with the iPhone or it will be replaced with something that does work with the iPhone.
Everything else is just an iPhone software update away.
I believe the RIM system is proprietary but there could be some patent exchanges in the future …I doubt it though. Good luck with your Blackberry. I’ve seen users of this instrument calling up Sprint and Verizon all the time for little quirks with that device . Glad it’s working out for you… just saying your cost model is base on false assumptions… you’ll probably have an iphone before the contract is up on your Blackberry anyway … dust four years mark my words.
Thanks for all the comments both pro and con.
It helps us evaluate what’s really going on.
RIM puts Blackberry Connect software on a lot of devices. I think it’s very likely that RIM will be responsible for the sale of a ton of iPhones if Apple lets them write a package.
As far as Exchange being replaced or “fixed” to work with the iPhone, dream on. It will be a change to the iPhone, Exchange isn’t going anywhere. Nor should it, it does what it does very well.
But until and unless the iPhone talks to my company, I won’t have one, no. And if my Blackberry is “dust” in four years, so be it. I can buy three of them for what the iPhone costs, and if you think you won’t be replacing your iPhone is four years, think again. There will be a new one next year that you’ll kill for. We both know it.
This reminds me of the time when the Sun was expanding into a red giant and half the worlds population in denial. After they caught on fire they got wise. Apples vision of expanding the universe happened the same way …half the population wouldn’t believe it until their favorite behemoth had a fire sale. Zunes and Wow signs piled so high you could see them from outer space. Occasionally, a song would squirt into the solar system from somewhere within the pile. Blackberries and Treos were added …later, no one could remember the origin of the mystery pile. Then, someone like me posted the truth on MDN ..and that’s how it happened.
Hey, where’s the MDN take on this?
Couldn’t you have blessed us with the Ed Colligan, Palm CEO, quote?
MDN is falling down…
Problems with email? I haven’t had any. Like none. So what are you talking about?
You might be right but my buying pattern with apple equipment has be every other generation, hence my purchase of a 3G and 5G ipod. My Iphone replace a Motorola RAZR which was supposed to be free with a rebate from BUY.COM but they pretty much stiffed me out of the rebate so the Q was the last phone I bought from them and they are now dead to me.
Now Exchange being a Microsoft product what makes you think the Mac Business unit of Microsoft isn’t already on the case and ready with iphone functionality on service pack 6?
Even if they don’t upgrade Exchange I think Apple will make the necessary adjustments in the iphone.
I just want everyone to know that when I see a post by ZT I DON’T READ IT.
It’s utterly pointless reading the prating of a fool.
Microsoft’s answer will be that the functionality is ActiveSync and Apple just needs to include it. My personal preference would really be for a RIM solution though, since a RIM solution would also enable the iPhone in companies who use Notes and GroupWise. Whatever happens, it’s going to happen in the iPhone and not on the server side.
The mistake a lot of commenters are making is creating an enemy of RIM. RIM is absolutely not the enemy, but they ARE the opposite of Apple. Apple is a hardware company that sells product on the strength of the software. RIM is really a software/service company who happens to sell a lot of hardware.
Folks, trust me when I tell you that RIM engineers and accountants touch themselves when they think about the prospect of selling Blackberry software to a legion of iPhone users.
@Reclamer, of course I don’t know what I am talking about.
People buy their Blackberry or Treo, can’t sync it to their portables or desktops and they take back to the store where got it.
That store in turn sends them to my store where I must sort things out, often downloading some software to get things working like they should.
I personally see several people with this problem every week, less now with the introduction of the iPhone. The iPhone syncs easily.
When I fix their sync problem (with the Blackberry or Treo, ect.), they thank me with a smile…all for not knowing what I am talking about.
By the way I am pleased YOU are having NO problems.
<u>From the article:</u>
The fact that users must have Apple’s iTunes software, with its heavy focus on entertainment, on their computers to synchronize data with an iPhone may be tough for many businesses to stomach.
Good point!
How many here think that an IT department would install iTunes on its computers?
How many here think that Apple might come up with a solution to this, seemingly sticky point?
Here is what Oppenheimer had to say yesterday when asked about corporate implementation of the iPhone:
Oppenheimer: “Andy in terms of the corporate market, we think the iPhone is a breakthrough product for all customers <u>including business customers.</u> It’s a great Internet device that includes the best e-mail client out there with the best Web-browser ever on a mobile device. And with a very little bit of help from the corporate IT department that can be set up to work with corporate e-mail. We already have a number of corporate customers that are piloting the iPhone in their enterprises and they have told us that they are very happy with the results so far.”
What is the problem opening attachments on the iPhone? word documents, pdf’s work fine. excel SS are readable, not editable,
As for mail, a simple forward to a gmail account strips spam, and a forward to a yahoo pushes the mail to my iPhone. This setup works quickly, with mail showing up on my iPhone before my laptop.
Syncing data? email it. I haven’t sync’d my phone to iTunes since I activated it.
As for Exchange, well knock yourself out. I can’t comment.
<sarcasm> But surely MS will provide a hook soon. </sarcasm>
I am a server administrator as well, and I have local and remote monitoring systems that notify me of system status, and thresholds that are exceeded with SMS and/or email I pull down with IMAP from our server with no issues at all. Sending email and getting email over Edge or Wifi has been seamless and zero issues. If you are having problems having your iPhone download email, maybe its your email server, but mine sure works well.
on a related topic, I’ve been assembling some info regarding syncing mobile devices with traditional contact/calendar options like salesforce, jigsaw and plaxo.
salescontacts.blogspot.com
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