“Abilene Christian University has adopted Google Apps and will pair them with free iPhones for students and faculty next fall,” Clint Boulton reports for eWeek.
“ACU will offer its faculty and about 900 incoming freshmen free Apple iPhones or Apple iPod Touches. ACU will foot the iPhone and service bill for its teachers, while students who choose the iPhone will have to pay for their service plans through AT&T,” Boulton reports.
“The iPhone offer is a great contract for Apple, but it could prove to be just as good for Google. The search vendor currently optimizes several applications, including search, Gmail and YouTube, for the iPhone,” Boulton reports.
“Take into account that more than 6,000 students and faculty have been using Google Apps for more than a year and Google with minimal effort will be able to acclimate thousands of people to its Apps on the iPhone,” Boulton reports. “‘A smart phone that doesn’t do e-mail or calendaring is pretty much a useless device,’ Abilene Christian University CIO Kevin Roberts said. ‘The fact that the iPhone is already optimized for Google is a huge win for us.'”
More in the full article here.
