iPhone moves into the business
March 9th, 2008 at 5:11 pm by MattIt’s perhaps fair to say that the iPhone hasn’t taken off in the ways that Apple would have probably liked it to, especially in the UK. The price of the device, not to mention the 18 month contract with only one provider, are most likely the two facts deterring many mobile phone users against ‘upgrading’ their devices. However, what is probably overlooked most of all, is the lack of take up in ‘Enterprise’ environments, and the device’s usefulness in helping businesses like the Blackberry, and less so, the Windows Mobile phone, are achieving.
On Thursday, Apple announced that the iPhone will support push email, by connecting to your business’ Microsoft Exchange Server; a sure welcomed feature by most companies. The other new features that will be available in software version 2.0, will include push contacts, push calendar, global address lists, WPA2, enforced security policies, more VPN protocols, device configuration, and remote wipe.
This is sounding very much like a Windows Mobile 6 device, but a lot prettier?
A great addition, which should strengthen Apple dominance
Businesses will most definitely consider the iPhone now along with the Blackberry alternative. Most likely, most companies will continue to be brand loyal with the Blackberries, but for businesses not currently taking advantage of push email, those will most likely consider the Apple Brand.
What else is new for the iPhone
Along with the release of iPhone 2.0 Software, software developers will be able to create applications on the device. Games, in-house applications, free, and other commercial applications will be part of the line up.
iPlayer comes to iPhone
The BBC announced on Friday that the BBC iPlayer, which shows BBC TV programmes for up to a week after they were first player, will be available on the iPhone.
“The iPhone and iPod touch are able to stream shows from the iPlayer website over Wi-Fi networks. The iPhone cannot stream BBC video over the cell network. A BBC developer said that the corporation was currently working on other versions of the iPlayer for “many more” devices.”
The corporation has agreed a deal with Wi-Fi firm The Cloud to provide all BBC online services for free at its 7,500 hotspots.
From the BBC news website.
The iPhone is slowly starting to become the phone that it should have been at the start. The design and multi-touch screen were the real excitements for consumers during the launch, but the phone was significantly weak on the technological front of things. The recent additions, (apart from the 16GB upgrade to the hard drive), to the iPhone have all been software related, what is needed next is the 3.5G and GPS support. Without this, the iPhone will simply not keep up with competition, and no matter what software support is on the phone, it will need these hardware additions to become one of the most popular phone in the world.
Apart from the hardware and software support, Apple might want to think about their relationship with other network providers and the costs and lengths of the contracts; but that’s another story! 
M