The enterprise market is a huge money-maker for carriers and manufacturers alike. Just take a look at the leading smartphone platform in the US. The RIM-made BlackBerry platform is the push-emailing, Outlook server compatible, enterprise-handset of choice among the corporate-set. Sure, the iPhone has already taken the second-highest market share in the smartphone segment, but cracking the mainstream corporate market would drive up market like mad.
There are already many businessmen and businesswomen (or is it businesspeople? Political correctness, bah) bugging their IT departments to support the iPhone, and there are even enterprise iPhone users that don’t even care that their IT departments are lagging on iPhone support. Well, it seems that AT&T is getting set to officially give the iPhone some corporate-love.
One of BGR’s tipsters have indicated that, come January 21, AT&T will be offering the iPhone to its corporate and business customers. All discounts associated with corporate and business accounts will still be valid – although there may be special iPhone data plans of $25 and higher that will be require mandatory subscription. Corporate and business customers looking to bring the iPhone into their enterprise environment will have to undergo a special pre-activation process before activating the iPhone through iTunes.
Now, it’s unclear whether or not the iPhone’s entry into the AT&T’s official corporate stable marks Apple and AT&T’s intent to bring Microsoft Outlook Exchange support to the iPhone. Contrary to what the image above (from BGR) might lead you to believe, there is no native support for MS Exchange on the iPhone. But, we sure hope the US iPhone duo is working to bring Outlook server integration to the iPhone – that would just make our year month week.
[Via: BGR]