Riding on a wave of sexy, cool, and competent, the Apple iPhone is moving almost stealthily into the corporate smartphone domain, long seen as the home turf of the RIM Blackberry.

Since its inception, the Blackberry from Research In Motion (RIM) has been seen as the ultimate corporate smartphone, seemingly the only phone to have in the boardroom and even well down into the executive ranks. Many large corporations were willing to subsidize the purchase of a Blackberry by their employees, according to a Wall Street Journal story. Perhaps because its line is seen as becoming stagnant, or as not having the panache of the iPhone, RIM is showing signs of yielding its smartphone market segment lead to Apple.

Apple announced during its quarterly teleconference Monday that the iPhone was being either evaluated or actively deployed in the field by over half of the Fortune 500 U.S. companies and roughly the same percentage of the Financial Times 100 companies in Europe. That has to be a number large enough to widen some eyes at RIM. Roger Entner, analyst at Nielsen Co., when asked about why the iPhone was becoming more popular in business, said, “The iPhone is clearly the sexier device and the threat (in the corporate market) is intensifying.”

The RIM phones are considered to be the more secure of the two mobile handsets, but private software companies are stepping into that gap to address the relatively few iPhone issues, making the security area less important. The iPhone has always had success in coming in the corporate back door when employees have requested they be able to use their iPhones at work. Now, though, more and more companies are starting to let their IT departments connect employee iPhones to back-end application like email.

Once that begins to happen, and the iPhone starts acquiring a stronger presence in the corporate world, RIM will truly have reason to worry. Clearly, all of the surveys indicate that the iPhone is the most popular smartphone on the planet. That has always been true with consumers but is now beginning to show up in surveys of business people. All indicators point to Apple moving in to replace Blackberry in the corporate world unless Apple falters or RIM wakes up.

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Entry was posted on Wednesday, October 21st, 2009 at 12:44 pm under Internet, iPhone.  Print This Post

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