The Apple iPhone has gone on sale in the Eastern and Central time zones as I write this post. I haven’t seen any lines at APple or AT&T stores in Honolulu, but I’ve been busy.
BusinessWeek points out that most corporate IT departments will continue to use devices they konw and trust, such as the Blackberry. the main concern is data security. As I noted on June 6, individual employees often want more flexibility than their corporate messaging system provides. In some industries, privacy is a major concern. It’s hard to believe that any hospital IT administrator would let employees receive patient information through their iPhone, for example. On June 19th, I posted some additional thoughts about corporate IT and the iPhone.
According to Engadget and many other sources, Yesterday Steve Jobs announced that most Apple employees will receive an iPhone in July. Apple will have a “street team” of 21,000 employees explaining the iPhone whenever they whip out the device.
Of course, there will be executives who want their own iPhone ASAP. Small business owners and sole proprietors may be among the early adopters. These users have enough authority to get what they want.
I have to agree with Walt Mossberg on several points. His review in the Wall Street Journal was mostly positive, but he did mention that there’s no clipboard in the iPhone’s editor. That’s almost a showstopper right there, but it’s something Apple can fix with an over-the-air update.
Apple’s partnership with AT&T is a bigger issue. iPhone users will find out what I learned after a few years with Cingular: EDGE is not a fast data service, even when its tweaked, as I mentioned on June 6 and others have suggested today.
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