Most of the iPhone hype is concentrated around the consumer opportunity—how many ravenous fans will line up on July 11 to purchase the new iPhone 3G—but a potentially larger opportunity for Apple ( NSDQ: AAPL ) and its partners may lie in the enterprise with companies quick to snap up phones with full browsers that can connect into their corporate intranet, or, for instance, can be used by a pharmaceutical salesperson to show video presentations from the palm of their hand. At $199, an iPhone sounds affordable, but for free—because your company is paying for it—all the better. I interviewed Jeff Bradley, AT&T's ( NYSE: T ) SVP of business mobility marketing to talk about how the iPhone will be used for business. Some excerpts: Did you start working with Apple after it announced that it would be targeting the enterprise with Microsoft's ( NSDQ: MSFT ) ActiveSync and other features? No, it's been since two or three months since the original launch. We started to talk to them on a number of dimensions on what we would like the enterprise capabilities to be, so when the opportunity arose, like it has now, it would provide some of the best experiences. We certainly shared our best thinking about the requirements for such a product. I don't know if you know, but we have an industry-leading position in BlackBerry, and sell more every day, month and year than anyone else, and likewise with Windows Mobile, so we have a broad knowledge and ...
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Most of the iPhone hype is concentrated around the consumer opportunity—how many ravenous fans will line up on July 11 to purchase the new iPhone 3G—but a potentially larger opportunity for Apple ( NSDQ: AAPL ) and its partners may lie in the enterprise with companies quick to snap up phones with full browsers that can connect into their corporate intranet, or, for instance, can be used by a pharmaceutical salesperson to show video presentations from the palm of their hand. At $199, an iPhone sounds affordable, but for free—because your company is paying for it—all the better. I interviewed Jeff Bradley, AT&T's ( NYSE: T ) SVP of business mobility marketing to talk about how the iPhone will be used for business. Some excerpts: Did you start working with Apple after it announced that it would be targeting the enterprise with Microsoft's ( NSDQ: MSFT ) ActiveSync and other features? No, it's been since two or three months since the original launch. We started to talk to them on a number of dimensions on what we would like the enterprise capabilities to be, so when the opportunity arose, like it has now, it would provide some of the best experiences. We certainly shared our best thinking about the requirements for such a product. I don't know if you know, but we have an industry-leading position in BlackBerry, and sell more every day, month and year than anyone else, and likewise with Windows Mobile, so we have a broad knowledge and ...