It seems as if Apple feels now is the right time to attempt a knockout blow to faltering corporate smartphone champ, RIM and their Blackberry lineup. Recent developments regarding the handling of large scale distribution and the handling of privately created apps have recently emerged that specifically target the needs of large organizations that may give Apple the opportunity to increase market share in large companies at the expense of RIM.
The first bit of news is the newly announced volume purchasing program for Apple's public iTunes store. This allows large companies to purchase paid apps in one single shot. It beats the heck out of having to pay for dozen's, hundreds or even thousands of individual app purchases. In addition, it looks like the public iTunes store may also begin selling custom-made B2B apps that are built for specific enterprise in-house functions. There aren't many details on the distribution process of private apps through iTunes but I'm assuming that employees will be able to be placed in a "company zone" within iTunes so they can access and download the B2B software.
While allowing third-party B2B software developers to distribute software via iTunes may work well for some companies, many organizations want complete control over their company phones and privately made applications. Nothing short of a private app store will work for this situation and it has become a must-have in corporate environments that wish to have a tight control on the apps they release.
But Apple is realizing that large businesses indeed require the need to fully manage and distribute private software to a large number of iOS devices. That is why Apple came with the iPhone in Business: Over-the-Air Enrollment and Configuration back in late 2009.
According to Apple, the OTA enrollment and configuration framework provides the enterprise with "an automated way to configure devices securely within the enterprise". The method of secure configuration is through the use of an iOS deployment in the company's public key infrastructure (PKI).
Apple essentially met the enterprise halfway with a secure way to manage and support iOS devices but still did not provide any way to distribute private iOS apps for use within an organization.
That brings me to the second piece of Apple mobile device enterprise news regarding a company called Apperian (an Apple spin-off) has developed a cloud network that uses the apple OTA protocol to bypass Apple's public iTunes Store and instead give companies the ability to distribute their home grown apps in a privately controlled app store for Apple products running iOS.
Several prominent companies are already using the private iOS app store including Cisco and Proctor and Gamble. I would think that the ability to be able to control and manage your companies security and applications that are confined within the organization would perk up the ears of many other CIO's that are trying to get a handle on how to distribute private mobile apps.
So are the two recent enterprise developments from Apple enough to finally kill off the Blackberry? Probably. Now their only problem is how to deal with Google and Microsoft, both of which are also attempting to become more enterprise friendly.
Article first published as Apple Seeks to Dominate the Corporate Smartphone Market on Technorati.
