Since it arrived almost two years ago, the iPhone has been a smash hit. Apple is introducing more business-centric enhancements, but the smartphone market is now much more competitive and SMBs have other choices to consider.
As we approach the second anniversary of the iPhone's arrival in June 2007, its success is unquestioned. Now Apple faces the challenge of maintaining the impressive momentum. That's why the company outlined a series of improvements calculated to boost its appeal to business.
At the core of Apple's announcement is an enhanced software development kit, with more than 1,000 new programming interfaces. The improvements are included in version 3.0 of the iPhone operating system, which will ship this summer. The new release features an intra-application cut/copy/paste function, support for Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), automated Wi-Fi login, push notification, and support for Bluetooth auto-discovery.
Initially, Apple focused on the consumer market, but some of these new features should make the system more appealing to business professionals. The phone's integration with other applications has been enhanced, and the cut/copy/paste feature will enable users to move information among various productivity packages, such as word processing and e-mail systems. The new feature is relatively easy to operate: Users double tap an image or text, drag it to its destination, and then double tap again to paste it. The new function works with HTML applications and SMS messages. Apple also announced support for MMS, which allows users to send and receive photos, contact information in vCard format, and audio files.
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The phone's communications capabilities have been improved. The process of connecting the device to local Wi-Fi networks has been simplified. Also, phones with the 3.0 software will be able to automatically find and exchange information with nearby Bluetooth devices, in effect creating personal area networks among iPhone users.
While there were a number of noteworthy improvements, the system still lacks some needed features. The phone doesn't work with Adobe Flash's animation and video features. Because the iPhone lacks background-processing capabilities, users cannot access one application while another runs in stealth mode. Tethering, where a notebook uses the iPhone as a modem connection to the Web, also didn't make it into the next release.
As mobile phones have become more powerful and more PC-like, a growing number of executives have begun using them on a daily basis, and some small and midsize businesses are using them in place of laptops, a trend that could gain momentum as the devices gain more power.
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While that change presents great opportunities, Apple now finds itself in a highly competitive marketplace. The company made a big splash in the high end of the wireless phone market, the smartphone sector, a couple of years ago, but since then, competition has stiffened. Supporters of the Symbian operating system revamped their operation. The operating system had been closed, but it has moved to an open source model with the launch of the Symbian Foundation. Research In Motion has dramatically revamped its product line and now has a model, the BlackBerry Storm, offering a touch screen similar to the one pioneered by Apple. Google has made a major push into the smartphone market with its open source Android operating system. And Microsoft reportedly has a series of enhancements on the docket designed to boost interest in its Windows Mobile platform.
IPhones have made their way into many organizations because of their sleek user interface. The new enhancements are designed to make the system more attractive to business users. Apple has done a credible job of delivering an intriguing system, and the enhancements are geared to keeping the company on that track.
See more columns by Paul Korzeniowski.
Paul Korzeniowski is a Sudbury, Mass.-based freelance writer who has been writing about networking issues for two decades. His work has appeared in Business 2.0, Entrepreneur, Investor's Business Daily, Newsweek, and InformationWeek.
