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Blackberry or iPhone: Pick Your Mania

Some rather sobering stats were issued from our friends at Canalys: In less than a year Apple has apparently become the #2 smart phone developer in the US. That puts iPhone right behind the Blackberry in terms of the number of smart phones in people's hands. No wonder phone makers are falling over themselves to come out with iPhone knock-offs.

Some rather sobering stats were issued from our friends at Canalys: In less than a year Apple has apparently become the #2 smart phone developer in the US. That puts iPhone right behind the Blackberry in terms of the number of smart phones in people's hands. No wonder phone makers are falling over themselves to come out with iPhone knock-offs.If I had heard this a few weeks ago I might have quipped that though the Apple and RIM devices could both be classified as smart phones they are sold to two very different sets of customers. Blackberries are for the workaholic email addict at your job: the one present at but completely oblivious to business meetings because thumbing absorbs him completely. (An issue some companies are taking immediate steps to resolve.) Whereas iPhones are for the gadget freak in your neighborhood: the one willing to spend hours or days standing in line for the latest Harry Potter book, Star Wars movie or most any other overhyped commodity item. While these two people might meet in the same therapy session treating obsessive compulsive disorders, they represent two fundamentally different types of mobile phone buyers: the business user and the consumer.

This seems like it's about to change. Apple, which for the past year has had its head firmly in the sand as it pretended the market for smart phones in the enterprise simply didn't exist, is about to let some Microsoft, Cisco, SAP, Oracle, and maybe IBM software run on the iPhone. Other apps may follow if the iPhone Dev Team gets its way. Meanwhile, Avaya and Pipkins are making some of their business apps available via iPhone browsers.

Business use of the iPhone is only natural since there is often a fine line between consumer and business users of mobile devices. The person who is a 'consumer' mobile phone user on weekends and evenings is often a business user of the same device from 9 to 5. But in opening the iPhone to third-party business apps, Apple is only breaking down one of several barriers preventing widespread iPhone use in the enterprise. iPhone monopolists among operators, the incredibly high price of the device, and the lack of 3G capabilities will continue to stymie the widespread use of the iPhone among businesses. Until Apple addresses these issues too, Dr. Brian says BADD (BlackBerry attention deficit disorder) and BDD (BlackBerry disassociative disorder), not iOCD (iPhone Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder), will continue to be the technology-induced manias du jour at most companies.