iphone no longer just a fashion accessory

Many people buy Apple products because they are great fashion accessories.

The ultimate fashion accessory was big news last week as Steve Jobs announced the much anticipated SDK (software developer kit) for the iphone which will allow developers to create applications, utilities, and games leveraging the same platform Apple used to create their own widgets. Starting in June of this year, consumers won’t have to “jailbreak” their phone in order to customize it.

Also starting this June, enterprise users will no longer have to beg their I.T. / technical support department to open up the corporate email server to hackers and SPAM attacks in order for them to access their email from their nifty iphone.

The iphone will be getting some proper business chops.  

Starting this June, the iphone will have full (and secure) MS Exchange support!  In order to accommodate Enterprise users tied to Exchange, Apple has licensed Microsoft’s proprietary ActiveSync protocol and will be delivering built-in support for talking to Exchange using its native language. This will enable iPhone users to gain access to server updates pushed from Exchange as they are updated on the server, rather than requested by the client at regular intervals like a typical email program.

Your iphone will also be getting push email (you’ll get email automatically like your bb), push calendar (get meeting updates live), push contacts (changes to your contact manager as they happen), and VPN (by Cisco).

This will be cause for celebration in many corporate hallways

Consider the impact the iphone has had already in the North American smartphone (business) market as reported by Daniel Eran Dilger:

In its first full quarter of sales, the iPhone has already climbed past Microsoft’s entire lineup of Windows Mobile smartphones in North America, according to figures compiled by Canalys and published by Symbian. That puts the iPhone ahead of smartphones running Symbian, Linux, and the Palm OS, but behind the first place RIM BlackBerry. The figures mesh with retail sales data already reported by NPD, which similarly described the size of the US market with a 27% chunk bit out by Apple’s iPhone.

Apple’s debut at second place across the entire North American smartphone market region for the third quarter ending in September is particularly noteworthy because the iPhone was only being sold in the US, and is only available through AT&T.

With full business / corporate support right around the corner, it’s conceivable that RIM’s blackberry device could lose the market share title by next year in North America. 

With rampant industry speculation of a pending touch-screen based blackberry with a slide-out keyboard, it’s a safe bet that RIM will have a fashion device of their own in market by Q2 of 2008.