Ignoring The iPhone Hype

From the Sept. 2007 Issue

By now, you’ve surely been flooded with information on Apple’s iPhone (www.iPhone.com), from the seemingly constant stream of TV ads to technology pundits who have generally praised the device, at least for its concept if not for its actual effectiveness. The concept is, indeed, great: Combining a person’s music/video player with their smart phone/PDA just makes more sense than lugging around two similarly sized gadgets.

But despite being first to market with the device, and despite having the lion’s share of the portable music market with its iPod, Apple’s iPhone will not take over the smartphone market for several reasons, and, more importantly, it will have little if any impact on the business market. It simply doesn’t meet the needs of business users, and you probably won’t end up with one, unless you’re one of those “Apple People” who absolutely must have an iPod, iBook, Mac or anything else Steve Jobs comes up with.

No Outlook Integration
It is little secret that Apple and Microsoft don’t like each other, and it seems like they go out of their way to prevent their devices and programs from supporting devices and programs developed by the other company. For personal use, this doesn’t really matter much: iPhone users will be able to do most of the communication-related things that users of other smartphones do, such as check their e-mail, surf the Web and store contact information. But where the BlackBerry, Treo and the other top tier smartphones integrate with Microsoft’s Exchange server, the iPhone does not, and Apple has stated that it is not in the works anytime soon. Since most businesses in the United States utilize an Exchange server with Outlook for e-mail and many contact management functions, staff of these businesses would not get the benefits of this integration if they went with an iPhone.

Other Applications
Many other business-oriented programs are designed for use on mobile devices, including advanced contact management, time and billing, GPS dispatching tools, inventory data synching and industry-specific tools. None of these will offer iPhone versions for awhile, if ever, because the developers will need to build new versions of the systems to run on the iPhone platform. To do this, Apple will need to provide the developers with the code base, which is something that neither Microsoft nor Apple likes to do. [Note: Right before this issue went to press, NetSuite announced that it’s online suite of accounting, CRM and e-commerce programs is compatible with the iPhone. So development is starting, and the NetSuite system is well-respected, but the iPhone still has a long way to go to catch up with BlackBerry.]

The iPhone also lacks some of the features traditionally found in smartphones, including instant messaging, voice dialing, voice recording and GPS capabilities, and it does not have a memory card slot.

Ma Bell
At the heart of any smartphone is its wireless capabilities. Apple chose AT&T (formerly Cingular, formerly AT&T) as its wireless service provider. AT&T has one of the largest networks in the United States, so if you had to pick one provider, this was an okay choice. But why did Apple have to pick only one provider? Unfortunately, this leaves out many potential users in the northern Great Plains states and Alaska, along with pockets around the rest of the country who cannot get AT&T wireless service. Also, many wireless experts have questioned whether AT&T will be able to handle the bandwidth issues associated with all of the features on the iPhone.