“After more than 30 years pitching first Macintosh computers and then iPod media players to consumers, Apple is using the iPhone to attract a new audience: business buyers,” Connie Guglielmo reports for Bloomberg.
“Apple has to convince companies the iPhone can be a serious tool for business — and not just the latest hip product,” Guglielmo reports.
MacDailyNews Take: It’s quite possible to be both “serious” and “hip” at the same time. Or do businesses always have to use inferior solutions for some unknown reason?
Guglielmo continues, “And Jobs has to sidestep a flood of competitors determined to stanch his advances.”
MacDailyNews Take: We’ve been pushing the state-of-the-art in every facet of design… We’ve been innovating like crazy for the last few years on this and we’ve filed for over 200 patents for all of the inventions in iPhone. And we intend to protect them. – Steve Jobs, January 9, 2007
Guglielmo continues, “‘We’ve seen significant interest in iPhone from enterprises,’ said Apple spokeswoman Jennifer Bowcock. Research In Motion spokeswoman Marisa Conway had no comment when asked about Apple’s efforts to win business users for the iPhone.”
“Threats to Research In Motion abound now, and the Waterloo, Ontario-based company last week said it will sacrifice profit to spend more on building lower-priced products and on marketing campaigns to stop customers from defecting to other brands,” Guglielmo reports. “That prompted the biggest drop in the shares in more than eight years last week as analysts said the iPhone’s $199 price may limit how much Research In Motion can charge for its latest products, making them less profitable than older models.”
“‘The iPhone will likely be the first Apple device for millions of corporate users,’ said Andy Hargreaves at Pacific Crest Securities in Portland, Oregon, one of 27 analysts tracked by Bloomberg who recommend buying Apple shares. ‘Positive impressions could drive stronger demand for Macs over time,'” Guglielmo reports.
“After a survey of technology managers, Hargreaves estimates Macs account for 1 percent to 2 percent of the U.S. corporate market and says that may rise to as much as 5 percent within five years. If Apple posts similar market share gains globally, it could add $6.5 billion or more in revenue, Hargreaves said. Apple doesn’t detail Mac sales by customer type,” Guglielmo reports.
“‘Windows runs better on a Mac than it does on a PC,’ said Jeremy Burton, CEO of Serena Software Inc. The Redwood City, California-based company allowed employees to pick between Macs and PCs this year after Serena did a study and found that Apple’s products were no more expensive to buy, support and run than rival PCs with Windows,” Guglielmo reports. “Employees were also showing up to work with their own Mac notebooks and asking the company to support the system, Burton said. He was one of them, having decided to buy his first Mac after becoming an iPod user. ‘People just like the Mac better.'”
Much more in the full article here.
…and the Blackberry will be millions of consumers first smartphone. It goes both ways, kind of like MDN…
“It’s quite possible to be both ‘serious’ and ‘hip’ at the same time.”
Just ask an orthopedic surgeon.
What about the Zune defecators?
“It’s quite possible to be both “serious” and “hip” at the same time.”
——————
Yes, it is. Although the iPhone is fully enterprise capable, it is not marketed towards enterprise.
The latest App store commercial… It shows games, fluff apps.
Nick, defectors assumes an installed base.
Even the App Store page on Apple’s site and the App store ad on the MDN page… Monkeyball, Scrabble, Cro-Mag, eBay, Maps..
http://www.apple.com/iphone/appstore/
“. . . it is not marketed towards enterprise.”
True and that’s a shame. Many corporations were given the iPhone SDK long before the public had access but they should market it to businesses unless they’re waiting to fix some of the shortcomings (e.g., true push, updates without iTunes, etc.) first.
@Monk VanDu
You totally missed the pun.
“Nick, defectors assumes an installed base.”
Touché!
Well, there is this one guy:
“My name is Stefan. I’m a huge fan of the Microsoft Zune. I’m very happy with every aspect of the Zune except for one thing, it’s not pink! http://www.iwantapinkzune.com will chronicle my quest for a pink Zune! Thanks for all the support and wish me luck!”
(iwantapinkzune.com)
Ahhh, well done Nick. Right over my head.
I suspect many high level business IT admins have a “serious hip” problem.
Oh, and Apple never tried to sell Macs to business users?
What was the Macintosh office with the original LaserWriter all about?
Stupid sheila reporter.
“Research In Motion … last week said it will sacrifice profit to spend more on building lower-priced products and on marketing campaigns to stop customers from defecting to other brands …”
This – is – amazing.
Here, RIM is publicly stating that instead of building better products, their business strategy is to make cheaper products, and spend more on advertising.
Stunning.
I ‘m still seeing stupid people that says the CrapBerries are fine, and I say “Stupid” because I have tried both, iPhones and crapberries, and iPhones is a lot better. People that keep saying that YUGO is a fine car is because they never drove a Aston Martin.
I hate the business types that always say “that’s not a work phone”, or “that’s not a work computer”…
Blah, blah, blah. Macs/iPhones do everything. Period.
Using something else is like buying a five bedroom house and having two rooms permanently sealed off.
“…sacrifice profit to spend more on building lower-priced products and on marketing campaigns to stop customers from defecting…”
idiots.
Try making better products that people actually want.
@noodle-arm
sorry… didn’t see your post.
@ Macintosh
“Blah, blah, blah. Macs/iPhones do everything. Period.”
Yes, iPhones do everything, except: cut and paste or use with a bluetooth keyboard. You can’t send contact or any other content via blutooth to colleagues or mates, like business types are used to doing…
It also lacks MMS, SMS forwarding, voice dialing or voice driven NAV and voice search, video capture, calendar invites, notes syncing and dial pad contact search, all of which most other “smart” phones have…and if you have to stay tethered to a wall or computer to keep the thing charged what’s the point? May as well just use the land line or skype…
And don’t call me a troll, I love using my macs (16+ hrs a day) and have 5 iPods of various flavors in my house and wouldn’t use anything but iTunes…but the phone just ain’t there yet…I can live without most of the features that I mentioned, just not those simple bluetooth protocols. My 10 year old son’s free samsung piece of junk can do those things, but not a next gen iPhone?
Jerry T:
While all of the shortcomings you have mentioned may be real, they are for the most part irrelevant for enterprise.
Sending contact or other stuff via blutooth? I have worked in an enterprise environment for some 17 years and have seen Blackberries adopted very early by all levels of management. I have yet to come across a business type who actually knows that it is possible to do what you described. Only the IT guys do this. Same thing with notes syncing, dial pad contact search (whatever that is), not to mention voice search (Blackberry supports that!??), voice search… While some of these features may exist on many (mostly WinMobile-based) smartphones (Blackberry? I don’t think so), none are ever used, or asked for, by business people. And IT people aren’t always the ones determining budgets or purchases.
‘Positive impressions could drive stronger demand for Macs over time,’
— It’s like they’ve never heard of the halo effect! Person buys iPod, likes iPod, decides to check out Macs too. We’re now to believe that the idea that this might also happen with iPhones is new?
Stupid Apple. If only they
” rel=”nofollow”>things might have been different.
Your potential. Our passion.™
@ Predrag
My list of grievances wasn’t really in comparison to the blackberry but rather at Macintosh’s comment that the iPhone does everything…which apparently it does not. It lacks some features that the most basic of phone has, namely the bluetooth stuff.
I’m not sure of your location but “toothing” is very popular where I am. People tooth contact info, photos etc all the time. Not just IT folks either, it’s very popular down the pub to do it amongst the commoners too. Being able to tooth sync with the desktop is nice too, especially calendar information and notes.
As stated, most of the shortcomings that I mentioned aren’t deal breakers but the lack of full bluetooth capabilities is…for me. I carry two phones now…sigh.
RIM’s strategy is classic of a dominant niche market player that has to stall for time until they can catch up. Apple is a consumer company first, that has always been their slogan ( the computer for the rest of us) . Now it’s the phone for the rest of us. Go to the app store and look at the number of games. That category leads any of the nearest by more than 2 to 1 which is entertainment.
Business programs should be promoted by business developed by business fo rthe use of business. Promotion of these programs do not belong in the mass media because it is a waste. You are more likely to target business periodicals and search engine advertising than to use traditional media advertising ( better bang for the buck). I have yet to see a subscription model used by most telecomms to sell their wares. All the programs save MLB.com tend to use a fixed price and mainly free updates. Annual subscription models or group site licenses may work better for some businesses otherwise they my find themselves giving programs away to gain market adoption, and that kind of anarchy serves no one really well. The best business tool tend not to be open source because of support issues and product improvement cycles tend to lag. Of course Winblows is the exceptions that proves the rule in this case and Autocad and Adobe suites are probably tied for second on that score.
Was it me or did this article turn into yet another Mac will be in the enterprise?
Yeah iphone is fantastic no doubt a big advance in what mobile can be, it’s more a computer then phone though. Anyways I don’t need to compare devices feature to feature.
If Apple truely wants enterprise market share here is the list:
1. dump Itunes as a requirement for activation, updating. See #2
2. provide BES type device management – policies to disable/set options on the phone remotely. Unsure how they get this unless MS makes SCMDM2007 iphone friendly or they buy any of the lesser server based solutions (intellisync, Good etc)
3. Whole device encryption. It’s becoming a regulation requirement in many states to protect NPI data.
They get those things even close to what BES does for Blackberry and they will have all the business they can handle.
Storm is coming in one month so Apple better be ready or the window they had is about to get a little smaller. Regardless if it has all the MUI/Appstore effect for many companies it will be close enough to what iphone does AND have all the backend BES security that we require.
http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2008/08/20/hsbc-denies-rumors-of-company-wide-iphone-switch/
Oops! Didn’t win that one.