Add a Comment Now - We Want to Hear From You
By Brian Boyko
We've been covering the iPhone release and what it might mean for those in the IT department in a series of articles, including: "Why Apple's iPhone means more work for the IT department," and "I, Phone: could the Apple iPhone's broad consumer appeal present a formidable threat to enterprise networks?"
There was one aspect that we really did not consider, and that was from the international perspective. The iPhone really doesn't bring anything absolutely new or revolutionary to the table - it just seems new and revolutionary because consumer cellphone and mobile development in North America has lagged behind Europe and Asia. So, from a global perspective, as NPD reader David Deans pointed out, these problems aren't new. He posted at NPD and we engaged in an e-mail conversation which may be of some interest to our readers:
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David Deans:
Brian, this issue is not new, although the iPhone may increase the awareness of the topic within the U.S. marketplace.
FYI, there are millions of PDAs, particularly pocket PCs, enabled with Wi-Fi already in the global marketplace. Most are owned by early-adopter individuals who often gain tremendous productivity benefit from these devices -- myself included.
Most companies have no formal IT policy for dealing with these mobile devices. Regardless -- it's not known to be a major issue at this point in time.
Also, because most enterprise mobile data applications have advanced in the Asia-Pacific and European markets to date -- with little penetration in North America -- it's understandable that an Austin-based company may not know these facts.
That said, if I was an American multinational CEO, I'd worry more about the global competitiveness issues associated with my CIO not having an enterprise mobile data application development game plan. Now, that's a real problem.
Brian Boyko (Editor):
David, thank you for bringing up these points. My big concern, however, is that while there are millions of PDAs with WiFi out there, owned, as you said, by early adopters, when the iPhone hits, (and it will likely be a hit,) the Mobile Web will not be solely the domain of early adopters. Other than perhaps the touch screen, there's no capability of the iPhone that hasn't existed in previous phone/pda/mobile combinations. The difference is adoption - just like there were MP3 players before the iPod, it took the iPod to make the MP3 player a household device.
As for mobile data application development, this is something that might be worth looking into. As you probably know, the iPod uses Safari for Internet browsing; yet very few enterprise apps are coded with Safari in mind. (Which may be another reason that Safari was released for Windows.) If they're coded with cross-platform compatibility at all, they may be coded for IE and Firefox for those employees who use Linux or Mac at home. Few people would even consider coding for Safari - but with the iPhone, Safari is the only choice, and will likely remain the only choice. Employees who use the iPhone may be locked out of receiving mobile data.
There's also the consideration that until the iPhone - and indeed, possibly even after the iPhone, there really hasn't been a standard implementation of the Web on the multitude of mobile devices - Blackberrys, Trios and the like - that application developers can really use. It's bad enough coding for both IE and Firefox; it's worse to consider every possible revision of every possible Web browser cooked up in the labs of mobile equipment manufacturers, which may or may not adhere to standards.
Still, your point is completely valid - the problem is not the iPhone, it is the lack of preparedness on the part of companies to deal with North American mobility.
David Deans:
Agreed, the iPhone will attract more mainstream consumers, and resulting adoption could increase the likelihood of a threat. Also, to date in the U.S. the threat has been minimized by the closed Walled-Garden service delivery model -- only a small group of applications providers are able to deliver service thru these portals.
IMHO, the upside potential of the iPhone is greater than the potential downside threat of device in a consumer or enterprise environment. My point: sometimes disruption can be a good thing, even though it creates implementation challenges for IT folks.
However, when NTT introduced their DoCoMo FOMA service in Japan several years ago, they opened the platform to numerous independent application developers, and eventually approved "thousands." As you may know, there's no clear de facto mobile OS, and so phones/smartphones can use Symbian or Brew or Windows Mobile and even Linux.
The very open environment in Japan has resulted in few reported instances of security threats, or other significant negatives, to the best of my knowledge. FYI, I'm in contact with an American that lives in Tokyo and is an analyst of the consumer and business applications of mobile phones in Asia. He is considered an expert in the field.
Your point about Safari compatibility relative to de facto Web standards makes sense to me, and is worthy of further research. I admit, as an advocate of mobile enterprise application market development, I tend to downplay the deployment implications -- with the exception of the UI on the mobile device, where I am very vocal about the negatives.
FYI, I worked for Motive, Inc. (as a strategy consultant, on contract) to help them map out the global mobile device management landscape. I considered a variety of use case scenarios, most were primarily from a human factors perspective. User activation and configuration of mobile apps is a major issue, both from a consumer entertainment and business communications perspective.
BTW, I've been championing the cause of mobile apps market development in the U.S. since 2004, and so you may find my column for Telephony to be insightful (again, regarding the huge upside potential).
We're not the only ones concerned with mobile computing; Network World reports that Gartner is expressly warning companies away from the iPhone.
"We're telling IT executives to not support it because Apple has no intentions of supporting (iPhone use in) the enterprise," Gartner analyst Ken Dulaney says. "This is basically a cellular iPod with some other capabilities and it's important that it be recognized as such."…
…"You'll have e-mail in a place that's unsecured. There are no firewalls on the device. There's no ability to wipe (data from) the device if it's lost," Dulaney says.
And at the same time, French government defense experts arewarning government users against using Blackberry devices due to concerns that messages sent via Blackberry could be intercepted by the American government, Forbes reports.
E-mails sent from "Le BlackBerry" pass through servers in the United States and Britain, and France fears that makes the system vulnerable to snooping by the U.S. National Security Agency, Le Monde reported. The company that makes BlackBerrys, however, denies such spying is possible….
In any case, it is better to research the effects of the iPhone and other mobile devices and have a firm IT policy regarding them, (even if the research points out the best policy is to do nothing.) It's better to prepare for changes to the way your users use the network that mobile computing can bring, than it is to simply assume nothing will change.
