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Anyone who hasn’t heard about the next generation of the iPhone must have been living on a desert island or in a deep coma. However, what’s really starting to generate a debate is whether the iPhone can hold its own as a business device.
iPhone for president
Most employees would happily trade in their corporate mobile phone for Apple’s latest release, but in the long term, can the iPhone’s functionality really stand up against the business device giants?
Exchange Connector software could be the application to change all that, I reckon. The software enables the customer to hook an iPhone up to an Exchange server, receive push email, and access calendar and contacts information directly from the mobile handset. The rich HTML format means email on a mobile device looks and acts like email on a desktop computer. With support for Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, PDF, JPEG and iWork, attachments can be viewed exactly as they were designed to be, which makes the goal of a fully functional mobile office one step closer. This service can be fully synched with a corporate server, which ensures there’s no need to duplicate email management when you’re back in the office.
How to make it pay
So far so good, but where’s the revenue stream? For dealers, the opportunity here is the ability to provide a hosted exchange service, which is fully compatible with the iPhone. Hosted Exchange enables mobile workers to share documents and communicate securely without the need for a firewall, essentially enabling a company to run an effective email system without the need to manage the back end. It’s this functionality which will support the iPhone’s transformation from a consumer must-have, to an essential mobile business tool.
But it’s clear that employee demands will be the main driver for the iPhone breaking into the corporate world. Services such as Exchange Connector will be the applications that will make or break the device’s long term positioning as an essential enterprise tool. So dealers need to ensure they are able to catch the early adopters quickly with a robust, secure and reliable solution. Get out there and start selling!
 | | visit www.apple.com/uk/iphone/ |