The Group the iPhone 3G Forgot
June 20, 2008 – 4:09 amAny attempt to criticize a product that has not yet been released is generally foolish. The web is awash with complaints about the iPhone 3G’s camera, debates about Assisted GPS, and countless other alleged deficiencies for a product hasn’t even been released yet. I certainly don’t want to be lumped in with those who have committed this folly; and yet, I have spotted a problem. This problem is not a missing feature of the phone itself. The problem is with one of the highly touted ( and really cool ) services that the iPhone is built to use. Although it was not stated explicitly the missing service can be gleaned from reviewing the keynote, press releases and other information directly from Apple.
Apple left a large percentage of small businesses without a push services solution. Push services ( for those who missed it ) is the ability of the iPhone to synchronize calendars, contacts and email over the airwaves with intervention. For anyone who works from the field this would be a God send. You would be able to make appointments while out of the office and be sure that your secretary hasn’t booked something for the same time. Email would arrive without having to manually hit the send and receive button or wait a preset amount of time. Contacts could be updated from the office in real time. Anyone who has forgotten to sync their phone and missed an appointment would know just how valuable these features really are.
My definition of small business may differ from the mainstream. I consider small businesses to be companies owned and operated by less than 10 - 20 people. Some would label this group the Small Office/ Home Office crowd. Whatever label you choose to apply, a push email, calendar, and contact solution was not presented for this group. I work with this group on a daily basis, see the about page for details, and I can state for a fact that most of them will not be able to use the push features of the iPhone. I can think of only one that uses an Exchange server. This group consists of lawyers, realtors, independent artists and other creative industry businesses. They are by nature small businesses, but a disproportionate amount of them ( compared the MS and Apple market shares ) use Macs.
Apple’s announcement detailed the ability of the push features through Exchange and MobileMe. Exchange servers are typically used in the upper end of the SMB market as they can be quite costly to maintain. MobileMe will be used by individuals and it is a great solution for them, but the inability to use a company domain name will be a deal breaker for the aforementioned small businesses. So where does that leave this group. Apple also briefly mentioned that a new version of OS X Server named Snow Leopard will be released next year. As detailed on their website and a couple press releases this server version will provide for push services, but it is not due to be released for another year. Almost everyone of my clients now uses Google Apps as an Exchange replacement. I am holding out hope that in the near future Google will come to the rescue and provide push services. Until then you can count me as one of the outsiders looking in.
