Is the iPhone the only handset that matters? Maybe. Last night we held a wireless and mobile session at the Interop 2009 Unconference, which is essentially a two-hour, beer-fueled, vigorous discussion of what real IT practitioners (the participants) are doing in enterprises large and small. Now, I’m not going to tell you that everyone universally thought the iPhone was well on the way to dominating the handset space in enterprises across the board, but I wouldn’t be too far off if I were to say that. The iPhone has a coolness factor that can’t today be matched, it has good enterprise integration (Exchange ActiveSync and all of that), it has a rich software development environment, a lot (a lot!) of apps easily available from Apple, a reasonable price, and, well, it’s today’s BlackBerry. Now, a few Windows Mobile fans were present noting that vertical apps (especially those based on .NET) were particularly well-suited to that platform, and the BlackBerry certainly isn’t going away. Any of these, plus Palm’s WebOS, Symbian, and the various flavors of LINUX can do the mobile job, no matter what that might be. But Apple has undeniably thought the whole problem though, and has done a far better job than any of its competitors in building both marketing image and a robust ecosystem. I’m not sure if the success of the iPhone was completely by design, but Apple rarely screws up regardless. And, now, their competitors are going to have to execute just as well as they have, or the race really will be over
For the record, I still think that LINUX-based iPhone-alikes will sell more units than the iPhone in a few years. And I’d still buy an iPhone myself today if AT&T had coverage at my house.
