It's difficult to assess how seriously Apple really takes the iPhone as a business device. After all, if it thought it would unseat — or even get a seat close to — Research in Motion's BlackBerry, it would have done things a lot differently the first time around. Perhaps its apparent ambivalence is because it reached a conclusion similar to those found by Sanford Bernstein in a study released this week. The firm found that only two of 105 CIOs planned to roll out the iPhone during the next year. An analyst who worked on the study was quoted saying the iPhone rollouts may be driven by employees bringing them to work. This, of course, is not a best-practice deployment method. If Apple indeed is hoping to penetrate the enterprise, here's bad news. Gartner analyst Ken Du***y, despite giving a positive report on consumer aspects of iPhone 3G, said that not enough information is available to judge whether the device is prudent for businesses. |