AT&T Will Market iPhone To Business Users, Analysts Don’t Want It
- April 24th, 2007
- Read 1251 times
- 7 Comments
AT&T, the company formerly known as Cingular, will in fact market the iPhone to business users, making Microsoft’s recent claims all the more relevant. If this seems dumb to you — because of the lack of third-party apps, non-replaceable battery and new, untested operating system — then it certainly seems dumb to many of those analysts we always read about. One of which said, “we’d immediately tell our customers that’d be a very serious mistake.” Maybe AT&T should rethink this.
It’s not that the iPhone won’t be a good cellphone, because, in all honesty and minus the hype, it’ll probably be at least halfway decent, but that it just doesn’t seem to have been developed with business users in mind. Leave that to the WinMo6s and Symbians of the world, whose open architecture means business can write write custom mobile apps that integrate with their enterprise systems. You don’t see me trying to render Toy Story on my iMac, you won’t see Joe Wall St fiddling with the iPhone’s touchscreen when he could be rolling a BlackBerry’s thumb wheel for all its worth.
AT&T to target iPhone to enterprise [Macworld via Mac Rumors]
darkwing (Who am I?)
1 year ago
What are the odds that RIM will port their Blackberry emulator to OS X? That would seem to be an easy way to get the business crowd on board.
Chainsaw (Who am I?)
1 year ago
Once the iPhone is released in June, there will be a big discrepancy in the number of people who currently say they will buy the $500 iPhone from those who actually do. There will also be a big discrepancy in purchasing numers between different demographic age groups. High schoolers tend to be dreamy-eyed when it comes to things that they want – and they care less about the actual functionalities of the product and more about the hype and “coolness” of it. Business users are the exact opposite. Because of this, I think it would be a waste of AT&T’s resources to market towards business users (for the first generation iPhone anyways).
There have been quite a few polls from different research firms showing a wide range of interest in the iPhone.
Change Wave Research: “9% of the population that is somewhat to very interested in getting the iPhone”
http://www.intomobile.com/2007/03/23/most-people-do-not-want-an-apple-iphone.html
Lets Talk: “52% of the surveyed users answering that they will NOT buy an iPhone”
http://www.intomobile.com/2007/03/18/current-music-phone-users-dont-want-an-iphone.html
PiperJaffray: “85 percent of high school students said they were already familiar with the multi-function Apple gadget, and of those students, 25 percent said they’d be willing to buy one at the previously announced $500 entry point.”
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/04/09/high_school_teens_say_theyll_plunk_down_500_for_iphone.html
akatsuki (Who am I?)
1 year ago
A keyboard is essential for the business crowd. I am still not convinced, even though the Blackberry has major interface flaws, it is still the standard for now.
K.C. (Who am I?)
1 year ago
The Iphone might be a hit with consumers who want an all-in-one device but I just don’t see it selling to businesses. Blackberry is still king!
Johnal (Who am I?)
1 year ago
I agree with K.C. It’s going to do well as a all-in-one device but it still lacks any sort of appeal to those who consider efficiency and dependability a priority over fashionable and trendy.
B Dobbs (Who am I?)
1 year ago
This “analysis” is so mired in ignorance that it’s not worth blogging about.
1. The iPhone isn’t available yet. The features haven’t been fully revealed at this time, so how can anyone make a reasonable assesment of it’s strengths and weaknesses.
2. We DO know that it’s running a slimmed down version of OSX. Seeing as Macs can easily read Office documents, isn’t it reasonable to think that this could be built into the iPhone if neccessary?
3. The fixation on a “lack” of keyboard is absurd to me. If you haven’t personally demo’ed the touch screen keyboard, how can you say that it’s inadequate for buisness email needs?
I’m not trying to be an iPhone apologist, I just think that the conclusions that some people are drawing (good and bad) about it are pretty flimsy.
Innocent Bystander (Who am I?)
1 year ago
It’s the same old tired arguments that remind me of the DOS days when they used to say things like “real computers use command prompts”. This is the 21st century, people.
Your misguided loyalty to BBerrys will begin to wane after seeing iPhones at meetings just like DOS loyalists grew tired of being accused of living in the past and laughed at by Windows users.