It’s possible the iPhone launch on Friday 29 June is more hype than substance – indeed
the
current poll we’re running on R/WW has only 20% of respondants interested in buying
an iPhone as soon as it’s released! 41% have no plans to buy one and a further 18% said
they’ll never buy one. The poll is below, if you’d like to have your say. Nevertheless,
there is a flurry of
web development activity around the iPhone. One of the more surprising aspects of
this is that enterprise apps are being built for, or ported to, the iPhone.
iZoho announced
We mentioned in our previous post that CRM provider Etelos had created an
iPhone version of its product. Today Zoho has announced an iPhone
version of their Web Office suite, called (naturally enough) iZoho. It currently allows users to view documents,
spreadsheets and presentations. As of now, only documents can be edited. And Zoho hasn’t
actually tested this on iPhone yet, so they say they will add more features “after we get
to play with iPhone.”
The big question around all of this is: how much adoption will the iPhone get in the
enterprise? We know that the iPhone will be mostly a consumer play, as with the majority
of Apple products. But on the other hand, the Blackberry has been an enormous success in
the enterprise. In many ways, the iPhone will compete with the Blackberry – and it
already looks to have much better Web support. Zoho noted this about iPhone in their blog post:
“…a device with a big screen, built in Wi-Fi, good usability and a full fledged
browser will only improve the chances of practically using web apps on a mobile
device.”
Raju Vegesna from Zoho told me they don’t have a version for Blackberry and that developing Zoho for the
Blackberry would be much more difficult. “iPhone was easy because we didn’t do lots of
changes”, Raju said, “we just supported Safari. But that’s not the
case with Blackberry. We’d have to do a specific version for it, as it is not a full
fledged browser.”
Conclusion: Watch out Blackberry!
In response to a question from Simon Leyland about business use of the iPhone in our
previous post, a commenter named Dan responded:
“Simon, I am not sure that iPhones will be less desirable than Blackberry’s to the
Enterprise. The Exec. and outside sales teams seem to be ideal for browser-based apps
that get them their data. Why not? I have been using a Blackberry for years and ready to
try something new. I would love to get at my data from a smaller device than a laptop.
But I may be the exception to the rule.”
I think Dan is right and there will be demand from businesses for the iPhone, despite
the higher price. The iPhone has better Web support than the Blackberry and by all
accounts is easier to use (although we won’t know for sure till Friday). What do you
think – will there be demand in the enterprise for the iPhone? How will this affect
Blackberry?
