Gartner realises iPhone is now for Enterprise 2.0!

It's now official - the iPhone is open for business, says Gartner.

Now we knew this at least two weeks ago, because of our diligent and perceptive research - we read Apple's public announcement on the 6th March

Anyway, sez Gartner:

The iPhone will soon be tailored for enterprises. Gartner recommends "appliance-level" support status once firmware 2.0 and improvements are released. iPhone will become a popular tool alongside BlackBerry and Microsoft devices.

Now this will shock you....some of our clients were actually thinking of avoiding crackberry and going on to iPhone, and they had the temerity to do this before Gartner officially announced it was OK! In fact, we ourselves had the audacity to actually ask the London Mobile Monday group for opinions on Crackberry vs iPhone for business use earlier this week.

Comments included:

- Just hope his users are happy with the virtual keyboard. I've not heard
any positive comments about this. The odd text message whilst sitting
down isn't too bad - but typing longer emails whilst moving/bumping on a
train etc is going to be more annoying.

- Why not go for HTC? Notably the tytn2 with full keyboard,blackberry support is available and html email support as well? And considerably less expensive!

- I have a Blackberry from my employer and an iPhone of my own. I actually struggle with the Blackberry now. The keyboard is feels so “pointy” and the buttons seem very small. I really miss the iPhone’s predictive text, which is brilliant, and don’t get me started on the rest of the Blackberry UI/OS which is utter rubbish in comparison.

- What the iPhone will enable with the enterprise announcements, is for
people to wear two hats, consumer and business, which with almost all
other devices today, it's just not possible in as graceful and elegant
way.

- Well, consider that in the similar period of time that the iPhone had
been out (just a couple of weeks longer), and Apple had sold 4 million
iPhones - HTC sold 2 million of their newly released iPhone like Touch
devices. Considering the publicity of the iPhone, and the hype Apple
commands and their marketing budget - I think that's a very good for
HTC. In total they shipped 12 million handsets over the year, up 12%.

- Could try looking at a Nokia E90 also. Can download free from Nokia
the Blackberry Connect or MS ActiveSync software clients and the
keyboard is quite ok. Has wifi, gps, 3mp camera, good battery life,
etc, etc. I'm using one to write this just now in fact, and regularly use it in
"on the move" situations. I'm very happy with it anyway!

I note the Gartner report that tells you this is 5 pages for $95, and 2 weeks after the fact - it's interesting in a way that there is still a market for this, as a quick scan on Techmeme or a few of the blogs on the day would have told you all you needed to know. I suspect its the cachet of a "trusted source" that allows in-corporate staff to put such notes forward as evidence in their business cases.

Deal for MoMo-ers - next time we'll print up a 5 page report of people's comments and some analysis and flog it for $95 a shot, and the proceeds can sponsor a booze up at the next MoMo meeting

Update - judging by the 100% karma to date I can only assume its the MoMo-ers voting for beer

Update 2 - Apple 2.0 reminded me - Forrester still has to change its mind after panning the iPhone at 2007 year-end