Will the iPhone lead the iPad to victory?
The iPhone has been slowly gaining on its competition in the enterprise smartphone marketplace, perhaps because of its app superiority, and those inroads may pay future dividends for the iPad.
It seems as if the iPhone is selling more and more into the business community, although perhaps not the Fortune 100 or even 500, where the Blackberry seems to have a death-grip on on the market. Still, a lot of entrepreneurs and small businessmen find the iPhone appealing, as do managers at many companies below the fortune 500 level, where IT departments, with their iron-clad restrictions on hardware, are either nonexistent or less restrictive.
It is possible that this iPhone business exposure is leading more people (and companies) to think about the new iPad as a business device. In a recent survey, about half of the respondents listed business usage as a reason for buying an iPad. Salesforce.com, the publishers of the popular customer-relationship management software provider is getting ready for the iPad, according to an SFGate article. Kendall Collins, head of marketing for Salesforce, says, “Apple has blown through the barriers with the iPhone, and the same thing is going to happen with the iPad. This will be huge for business, and a major new category that will be a catalyst for many different aspects of the industry.”
As important, there are apps for the iPhone that are aimed squarely at making it more secure, and those apps will be translated to the iPad. A good example is Good Technology, who builds and sells a secure messaging app for the iPhone, essentially hardening the phone for enterprise messaging, laying to rest some of the security issues that have surrounded the iPhone. They are porting their apps to support the larger size of the iPad. Brian Bogosian, CEO of the company, says, “This kind of device category is tailor-made for enterprise employees, people who are collaborating, communicating and accessing information.”
The iPhone may well be making some part of the probable success of the iPad possible, then, just by having prepared the ground for mobile business products from Apple. The larger size, the faster speed, and the easier keyboarding are also playing a part, of course, but business experience with the iPhone may well be paving the way for the iPad in the enterprise, shortening the amount of time that it will take for the iPad to storm and surmount the walls of business.
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March 29th, 2010
If you have people planning business use for a device that is unreleased and not reviewed because of a tactic that serves no purpose except upping the buzz, I’d have some concerns about their ability to make decisions. Single sourcing is not considered a good practice, last time I looked.
If anything screams easy video conferencing, it’s adevices like this. Yep, a device unable to run a full OS, can’t play HD video for presentations and has already been announced as not supporting tethering will be an overwhelming success in this segment.
Our sales people routinely pop the SD cards from their cameras into their laptops and use them to do things like updating our website. The announced 10 hour runtime with no choice but plugging it in is also a drawback.
You run the risk of Apple deciding to jerk applications like Skype and Google Voice at any time, or really any app for that matter.