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| Tuesday, March 11, 2008 |
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Apple ready to move on business
Stephen Ellis | March 11, 200
APPLE'S renaissance in the past decade has been built on consumers: on elegant, easy-to-use computers, music players, software, and now mobile phones that are all largely used outside the workplace.
The company has always had a modest footprint in a few industries, but its financial performance and reputation have long depended on wowing home users rather than persuading corporate IT departments to open their cheque books.
If there is one key message from Thursday's unveiling of the long-awaited software development kit for Apple's iPhone, it is that this is about to change.
The kit allows third-party companies to develop new applications and tools for the iPhone platform, such as enterprise-class mobile email and messaging, or programs to look up medical records or supply chain databases.
This will allow the iPhone to tap the fast-growing markets for smart computer-like mobile devices in industries such as healthcare, logistics and retail. Of course, the kit and Apple's associated partner program will also accelerate the creation of more consumer oriented software in areas such as games, messaging and multimedia.
The iPhone has so far largely been marketed as a consumer' device, although its instant success in grabbing a quarter of the US market for high-end mobiles has included a growing presence among corporate users.
This, inevitably, has dragged Apple into increasingly direct competition with business-oriented smartphones.
Apple's move to licence Microsoft's ActiveSync technology for mobile delivery of Exchange messaging and calendering, and upgraded security and remote management capabilities for the iPhone, will help to fill that gap, but Apple will not catch up straight away. Of course, there is no guarantee that Apple will win: success in enterprise IT markets requires a different set of competencies than success in consumer markets.
Both rest on delivering the right features at the right time and price, but in the former adaptability and interoperability with corporate systems are critical, while in the latter simplicity and ease of use are vital.
For iPhone to emerge as the dominant platform for smart mobile devices, Apple will need to relax its total control over the elements that feed into the way a product is experienced by the end user.
The kit (and the associated business model, which involves Apple taking 30 per cent of revenue from iPhone apps in return for distributing them and ensuring they play nicely together) is a first step down this path, and shows that Apple remembers the costly lessons of its 1980s reluctance to open up to partners.
Source: Australian ITLabels: ActiveSync, Apple, Exchange, iPhone, Microsoft |
| posted by Perimbean @ 7:05 PM |
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