Produced for itproportal, this magazine shows the latest and, in my opinion, the best business handsets and laptops available for April 2008.

Business Mobiles - April 2008

Another month another mobile expo. 

CTIA this week may (I used ‘should’ before and was disappointed) see new handsets from BlackBerry, Palm and, inevitably, Nokia.

On previous performance though, Apple may announce something new to spoil everyone’s party.  A whisper has it that a 32GB iPhone is in the offing which, if true, would kick every other media playing mobile into touch. 

A 32GB iPhone with only EDGE seems unlikely as that would only spoil any prospect of a 3G iPhone launch for May/June.   But stranger things happen, and I’ll only have to wait a few days longer for the truth.

Seems like good old GSM is refusing to disappear.

An enhanced flavour of EDGE announced today (27^th March 08) by Nokia Siemens tweaks the potential data speed of existing EDGE networks to a usable 592 kbps (presumably in lab conditions though).  This only requires a software upgrade to existing Nokia Siemens installations so could be deployed quite rapidly. 

Whilst not on par with HSPA networks (3.5G) it does exceed the original 3G data rates, with potentially many more handsets upgradeable to use it.  Further improvements up to 1.2 Mbps are promised.

The original iPhone could be around longer than expected.

Motorola have almost admitted defeat.  Their announcement today (26^th March 08) splitting off their handset division may protect the main company from becoming impecunious. 

Perhaps shareholders may now reap some return on their investment when a company is brave enough to buy into Motorola’s IPR and brand. 

Google, Apple and Microsoft come to mind as suitors, but more realistically the beau will be from Asia.  Perhaps CTIA, in two weeks, will give everyone a better feel for Motorola’s future. 

Certainly Carl Icahn smells blood from the wounded company and may ultimately be responsible for its demise this year.

According to the Press Trust of India (24/3/2008) RIM are still in the hot seat over the inability of India’s security services to hack through the BlackBerry’s encryption to allow interception of messages.

If this is truly an issue I would suggest they just hack into the corporate and government email servers instead.  This would be much simpler solution and furnish more information, particular from all the laptops, desktops, Symbian handsets, and other connected devices sending and receiving emails. 

Or could there be an ulterior motive.  Rather than intercepting RIM’s Indian users, are they actually targeting foreign nationals?

The general trend of smartphones targeted to a wider audience has been reconfirmed by ABI research.  They predict that almost one in three handsets will be smartphones by 2013.

Pricing has been the issue for both Nokia & Microsoft, due to third party software fees, but as the software suppliers are absorbed by the duopoly so pricing is starting to take another notch down. 

The Symbian powered Nokia 6120 Classic is available at Tesco for under £100, so it should not be long for HTC/Microsoft to counter this. 

For Nokia especially future profits will be in content and their smartphones will deliver it.

Profits are up at Vodafone as data sales have finally taken off, though it took the introduction of fixed price mobile broadband.  After all per byte pricing was terrible.

Yet now with £15per month giving you 3GB with Vodafone, 3 and T-Mobile, the sale of data has sky rocketed.  So much so that Vodafone are laying off staff to concentrate more on data sales! 

This is great for tenants as they can now buy broadband for themselves rather than their ‘temporary’ home.

However Vodafone had better watch their backs as network performance degrades and WiMAX is just around the corner.

Although Sony Ericsson announced 15 new mobiles they are apparently falling behind their own sales expectations for high end devices.

To my mind Sony Ericsson have some of the most reliable and easy to use mobiles around.  But for the last year there has been little to shout about in the business and bling sectors. 

Nokia  constantly innovates with style, design and features.  Yet SE’s P1i is an old 3G Symbian handset that should have been replaced months ago, and the Xperia looks good but late to market.

Hopefully with increased investment SE should now start putting the pizzazz back.

We are told that after the children, the pets and the photographs the next thing we would save from an inferno is our mobile phone, presumably to call the fire brigade?  Not really as now our most endearing photographs, and many cute videos, are nowhere else other than our mobiles. 

But do we ever bother to backup?  Do we know how, many don’t.  So after many, many false starts O2 are taking the problem seriously, again.  This time their twist is that users can share photographs with friends.  Yes there are many other services out there but for many this will fit their needs.

There have been more reports of viruses aimed at Symbian mobiles.  It’s an obvious target for malicious code writers due to Symbian’s  widespread availability, connectivity and functionality.  As the price of devices are reduced, and become even more widely available, then attacks will logically increase.

Except of course they shouldn’t.  Most Symbian viruses attack older versions, as the latest handsets are radically more secure.  Older devices are also fading out of existence so attacks will centre on persuading users to accept dodgy email attachments and MMS messages.  Ultimately AV software will not stop user negligence but may mitigate it.

Motorola are losing their head honchos at an alarming rate.  Over the last two weeks their head of devices, European VP and chief marketing officer have bailed out.  Well it could give Motorola a chance to re-energise their top management and inject some excitement into their products. 

With no real pizzazz from MWC or CeBIT, it falls to CTIA Wireless to see where Motorola is heading.  Courtesy of intomobile, there is a leaked Motorola promotion video on YouTube, ‘grooving’ up a new range of handsets.  Viral marketing, perhaps, but hardly surprising when they are losing market share to Samsung. 

The palmOne Treo 600 was a breakthrough handset when launched.  With a great screen and a vast range of third party software, it was the smartphone to beat, especially in the US.

There were of course a number of problems.

An obvious one was the battery, users couldn’t replace it; a real flaw for busy business people.  Another problem was the Palm OS did not multitask efficiently.  Unless you were a high end partner of Palm, your application would not run in the background. 

Rumour has it that, come V2, the iPhone will also have this feature.  Not so clever if true.

My hopes for CeBIT were dashed; Nokia launched a couple of mid series and network branded handsets, but not a new range of E series business devices.  Never mind, Apple came through with the goods so we have something to look forward to for the second half of the year.

It sets me wondering why Nokia and Samsung aren’t trying to pump up customers who are coming to the end of their contracts.  Businesses especially will be taking the Apple very seriously as a replacement to their existing Nokia’s. 

2008 will now be good to Apple, potentially bad for everyone else.

Well it’s not here yet, but, from late June, iPhone v2 will be a big seller to the glass box brigade. 

Running through my previous guess list…

1.         SME and corporate tariffs

I would still expect some new tariffs from O2 but as of tonight, the 6^th of March, only AT&T has announced different tariffs for corporate data.  

Corporate plus points 2 out of 10 for the US, ? out of 10 for O2

2.         Security

Mostly good news is that remote device erasure is present.  Whether this covers SIM swaps and remote reporting is unclear.  Better WiFi security, VPN and authentication support are also included, but apparently no device encryption.  Some compensation is offered by offering centralised security policy enforcement. 

Still the press will have a field day if a banker or government official loses an iPhone holding unencrypted data of millions of customers or citizens.

Corporate plus points 7 out of 10

3.         Applications

Excellent news.  By licensing ActiveSync Apple can now provide a service equivalent to DataViz and Microsoft’s own direct push client.  I use DataViz on UIQ and it performs admirably, supporting contacts (local and global) and calendars and, on S60 platforms, inbox sub folders.  Apple’s will I’m sure be just as effective.

Also by supporting third party paid for applications Apple has vastly extended the iPhone’s usefulness.  There is also a desire on Apple’s part to support bespoke corporate applications, which in my experience will move the iPhone to centre stage within many company mobility strategies.

Corporate plus points 9 out of 10

4.         Control and asset management

Limited good news here; centralised management for security & deployment will be available.  Unfortunately it requires a data connection rather than defaulting to SMS.  Worse still, it requires the user to do something which is not a good idea for mass deployment.  I also would have liked to have seen forced configuration and update of applications and hardware settings.

Corporate plus points 4 out of 10 but could have been higher.

5.         Hardware flexibility and interfacing

No news here, which is bad news.  Perhaps there are unannounced feature for v2. 

Corporate plus points 0 out of 10

So instead of a quarter cocked corporate solution, it’s almost spot on. 

IT departments will now have a device that, on the whole is better than a BlackBerry and has all the right ingredients for both users and IT staff alike.  A resounding success in my book.

So will I buy an iPhone.  No.  For myself, I can’t quite lower my sight from HSPA down to EDGE, but it’s mightily tempting.

I’ve banged on about what should happen, but this is what I guess will.

1.         SME and corporate tariffs

            O2 will have a corporate tariff, but I guess it will not be allowed on an existing contract.

2.         Security

Some form of remote device erasure through iTunes but no integration with existing systems.

3.         Applications

A push email application, but how extensive it will be is anyone’s guess (apart from Apple’s product managers).

4.         Control and asset management

            Not a chance.

5.         Hardware flexibility and interfacing

            Not a remote chance.

So this will be a quarter cocked solution for corporates.  Will the lack of security and remote device management prevent widespread deployment?  Not a chance.  The suits will be in seventh heaven, and I can already hear the nashing of IT teeth at yet another handset to support.

Not allowing the existing iPhone to act as a modem, or providing full feature Bluetooth access, are just two mistakes that need rectification.

Even EDGE data speeds are better than no WAN capability for a laptop, and though there are third party solutions, the iPhone needs to be jailbreaked to allow them.

The omission of full Bluetooth access is also disappointing, one that should have been corrected months ago.  Bluetooth provides a diverse method of sending and receiving information, let alone the use of Bluetooth stereo headphones, all of which have been denied to the iPhone user.

Remote camera and Bluetooth control would also help, but I’d be amazed if that ever happened.

The applications, hardware and security that will make the iPhone so usable needs be set up and maintained, especially as new features are deployed almost on a monthly basis, irrespective of country of location. 

Any IT department should also be looking at how they can remotely interrogate, backup and restore an iPhone to ensure that the user is not abusing its use, with potential legal repercussions, and that if lost, stolen or sold, it can be remotely deleted.

Apple could almost achieve this through iTunes, but more sensibly should have worked with Intellisync, mFormation and many others to ensure that existing systems can provide the relevant control.

What’s the betting that’s happened!

Apart from the usability, the main point of a corporate iPhone is what it could do that it can’t do now.

The iPhone is being seen by corporate customers as a BlackBerry replacement, so it must have BlackBerry type features.

An open application platform as supported by all other smartphones is a pre-requisite.  Apple have indicated that applications will be controlled via iTunes, which for a centralised IT department may not be good news.

Fundamentally the iPhone needs to support Push email using either Microsoft Direct Push or BlackBerry built in.  Both services are well proven and effective.  DataViz for UIQ is a real boon.

In addition native CRM and application interfaces tailored to the iPhone and back end system must be allowed.  Future iPhone sales will be hit if Apple prevent this.

The corporate people who are, and will buy the iPhone are serious players in large and small companies, with significant influence.

The very nature of their jobs will mean that they have access to highly sensitive information, contacts and appointments.  The loss of this information by theft or interception provides a significant financial and security risks to them, their companies and their customers. 

In addition, a 16GB iPhone is able to hold three DVD’s worth of information.  Think of the problems one disk lost from HM Gov caused!

The iPhone must support enhanced user verification, advanced device encryption, SIM swap lock out, remote wipe, VPN access using secure ID authentication, and robust reporting services.

Considering how the iPhone’s been hacked, I’m not sure even this will be enough!

I occasionally do some work for wealthy friends who need occasional assistance.  They don’t mind spending money if they are not being ripped off.

Along to O2 they went and left with BlackBerry’s not iPhone’s.

First problem, O2 will not sell the iPhone on a business tariff.  No exceptions.  You could be a zillionaire, but tough luck, no deal. 

Second problem ‘was’ the horrendous tariffs O2 were foisting on consumers.  No sane oligarch would ever consider being taken for a ride, so why did O2 and Apple even consider that their target professional customer would be that crazy. 

So O2 must allow corporate customers to take a corporate tariff within an existing account, and not foist unreasonable terms on iPhone users.

Apple will have to show a number of fundamental enhancements to get the corporate market champing for large scale deployment.

For mobile the effect of the OS is more important than the OS itself.  So Apple will have to show:

1.            SME and corporate tariffs

2.            Security

3.            Applications

4.            Control and asset management

5.            Hardware flexibility and interfacing

It would also be nice to observe some improvements in hardware.  This will be unlikely as the announcement for the 3G iPhone is rumoured for May; so perhaps Apple’s benchmark should be the BlackBerry Curve 8320.

Part 3 follows.

With the announcement from Apple tomorrow of their corporate Apple solution I can only hope that they get their ideas right.  From being disdainful of Apple’s attempt at making a mobile, and as fundamentally flawed as it is, I now want one. 

I am surrounded by 1G, 2G and every other G technology, the fundamental flaws in all of these, with a few exceptions, are usability and design excellence.  For the corporate market this is critical as many senior people are, or would, forsake their BlackBerry’s and E’ Nokia’s for Apple’s smooth interface. 

What would persuade me to buy one?

Microsoft love watching others take commercial risks and then swamping them out of the market. One only has to think of Netscape vs. Explorer, WordPerfect vs. Word, and Novell vs. Microsoft Server. 

At the turn of the millennium Microsoft distained mobiles as almost toys, yet they rapidly pushed deep into mobility to preserve their future, with considerable success in niche markets.  Now we are seeing the attack on Adobe Flash and Nokia’s compliant.  This will seriously damage Adobe’s future commercial strength and secede another market segment to Microsoft.  Having let Microsoft into their realm, Nokia may find their future in jeopardy.

With CeBIT having become more business orientated, Nokia, Palm, HP and BlackBerry will hopefully have something more exciting than MWC(3GSM).  In fact this is a certainty as Vodafone let slip their product roadmap in January (thank you) and there were several unannounced handsets that should be in stores in Q2.  So we can look forward to more HSPA and GPS for our road warriors.

There are also several reports of a modified Nokia E90 (E90i?), though it would be nice to have a replacement for the 9300i.

However Apple will spoil everyone’s party with the launch of their corporate iPhone.