Analyst Says iPhone is More Enterprise-Ready than BlackBerry

Sorry, it’s hard to not do a spit-take after reading that. Forrester Research analyst Ted Schadler has gone on record touting the iPhone as a superior enterprise mobility solution for a few reasons, primarily because appealing to end-user demand before management criteria results in greater gains. For example, if employees have their own handsets rather than requisitioned ones from a company bucket, they’re more prone to take care of their phones. British American Tabacco had done a study awhile back that supported the same idea, that you can win over your workforce if you seduce them a little bit. The iPhone’s pretty good at doing that, as we all know. Making folks all lovey-dovey for their phone is not the only thing, though – there is, apparently, money to be saved; the iPhone saves $360 per year per phone over BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM), presumbaly after taking into account all of the back-end infrastructure BlackBerry requires. On top of that, security has supposedly been patched up sufficiently for enterprises to not worry, and web browsing is considerably more efficient.

At first, the iPhone wasn’t taken seriously at all by enterprise, and even with Exchange support, the platform was patronized with little more than a pat on the head by most serious companies. But now Forrester is saying that the iPhone is actually better than BlackBerry for enterprise? I find it a little hard to swallow, and most heavy-duty e-mailers will never pick up the iPhone because of the keyboard alone. To pick up the report for yourself, head over to Forrester.

[via iPhonesTalk, pic]