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Today Gartner reversed its opinion on the iPhone: Before, it said the iPhone wasn't business-friendly, but today, the firm grants it "appliance-level" status, meaning that with the upcoming enterprise-friendly iPhone 2.0 update, it'll officially be safe enough—and functional enough—for hardcore suit-wearers.
We journalists tend to think of Gartner as a good place for stats and opinions, but IT honchos look to the company for guidance on how to spend their multimillion-dollar budgets. In this case, Gartner explains its decision in terms that IT buyers will appreciate:
But this here's the deathblow, dealt by Gartner vice president and distinguished analyst Ken Dulaney:"Appliance-level" status permits the iPhone to be used for PIM, e-mail, telephony and browsing applications. It also permits the device to be used for other dedicated functions where the software is supplied by a third party, functionality is kept to a restricted set, the software supplier offers support for a backup platform and IT development resources are not needed to program custom code locally residing on the device.
[Gartner]"The iPhone will thus match up initially in several segments against its main smartphone competitors—BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and Symbian Series 60."