The iPhone made easy for business customers
Apple has finally granted the wish of business users who have craved the coolness of the iPhone but couldn't live without their push work e-mail.
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Until now, iPhone users who wanted to get e-mail on their iPhones had to jump through a series of technical hoops. And as a result, a lot of business users, who would have otherwise bought the iPhone right away, have stood on the sidelines with their BlackBerrys or Windows Mobile phones drooling at the iPhone.
But now these business users will be able to get their work e-mail on an iPhone just as easily as they can on a Windows mobile phone or a BlackBerry. On Thursday, Apple announced at an event at its headquarters in Cupertino, Calif., that Apple has licensed the Microsoft ActiveSync protocol, which will make it much easier to do push e-mail and contacts with Exchange servers.
Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, demonstrated on stage how to activate and set up the Exchange function on an iPhone. The entire set up can be done over the air allowing e-mail, contacts, and calendar information to be automatically pushed to a device.
The iPhone opens up for business
The announcement is a huge deal for Apple, because it eliminates one of the barriers the company faced in addressing the business market. It also made the iPhone more appealing to a group known as prosumers, people who buy their own cell phones for personal use, but also access some business applications, such as corporate e-mail, on their phones.
Right now, Research in Motion dominates the business smartphone market with over two-thirds of its 12 million customers coming from businesses and government. Large businesses bought in early to RIM's push e-mail system, which requires large companies to have all their e-mail routed through RIM's own servers. For the most part, RIM's BlackBerry e-mail service has been a huge success. But there are signs that the company's dominance could be vulnerable. In the past six months RIM has experienced at least two major outages where e-mails were not forwarding to BlackBerry devices in a timely manner.
Blackberry's co-CEO Jim Balsillie said a day after the last outage that he wasn't too worried about the outage affecting its relationship with business customers. But as Apple makes it easier for corporate customers to get e-mail on the iPhone, he may reconsider.
Marguerite Reardon has been a CNET News reporter since 2004, covering cell phone services, broadband, citywide Wi-Fi, the Net neutrality debate, as well as the ongoing consolidation of the phone companies. E-mail Maggie.
innovating more in the mobile space than anyone lately... I really
expected Palm Treos to trounce Blackberrys, but Palm is stuck in a
rut, and now Apple shows the way forward...
first became a company. Microsoft and the rest are always playing
"catch up"!
iPhones had to jump through a series of technical hoops."
Excuse me, but what hoops?
I hadn't even seen an iPhone before I got an email from our CEO
from his shiny new phone. The first time he synced the phone to
his computer it set up his work email automatically.
My company "adopted" the iPhone the first day it went on sale. ;)
This is good news though.
connections.
enough for you?
Up until this point, its just been an over-hyped toy.
Now Apple can start to see some real money roll in the door.
Once Apple adds a Sprint/Nextel-like walkie-talkie feature, I can "entertain" the notion of buying one.
Apple still has some hurdles to overcome before I can take the iPhone seriously.
potential. Platforms develop over time. You don't seem to get that.
The potential has always been there for this handheld computer to
be a game changing device. It was a game changing device from
day one. What you saw today was the first wave of that
potential...plenty of us saw it from the start. You thought it was a
toy...as did Cnet. You both couldn't be more clueless in your
assumptions.
iPhone is a hand-held computer with cellular capability.
Go entertain yourself with you walkie-talkie. Hurdles, you mean
the kind where you can't turn the light on behind a thick skull?
demonstrated using ActiveSync with the calendar, mail, and contact
applications on the iPhone.
Are you asking if the desk top versions work with Exchange? That I
don't know, because I do not use Exchange and never looked at
that. However, if that is your question, you could probably post it
at one of the forum sites.
- Toy?!?
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by mgichg
March 7, 2008 5:56 PM PST
- I'm sorry, but any handheld device that is running OSX, whether its the 'lite' version or full version is Not A Toy. A $50 Nokia phone is a toy. This is a platform, not 'just a phone', and most certainly not a toy. The fact that you can make calls, listen to your music, email and surf the net is its most basic features. What comes next with the SDK and the iFund $100M venture capitalist injection is what will elevate this device to a level never attained by any hand held device in history. And this is what will leave every one else in the dust at least 5-10 years behind in terms of competition.
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- Toy???
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by aquaadverse
March 8, 2008 6:41 PM PST
- Why is everyone acting like this is some kind of breakthrough? 5-10 years behind? There were other devices that did what this device is doing. A nice device, some nice features and good potential. Should I list the money invested in some of the Dot Com fiascoes by VC funds prior to the meltdown? Amazon and Google were the one of the first in a new medium.This phone, while admittedly an excellent piece of electronics and well deserving of praise, is not in that category.
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(22 Comments)Remember, Amazon was started with $8M, Google with $24M, and look at them now.
You guys call this a 'Toy' yet it has $100M sitting there ready to be invested in its application development future.
I'm guessing you guys who call it a toy never studied economics, or have ever had a vision for the future?
This is gonna blow up to something massive, sell your shares in RIM, its going to be Apple's "iPod phenomenom" all over again, version 2.0
It may very well hurt RIM but Android and other OSS platforms have the advantage of not being chained to one device and distribution method.
Wipe the foam from your mouth. Closed platforms are not the future, and the structure Apple has setup for the SDK is exactly that. Back to your Pom Poms