What Does iPhone CRM Need to Beat BlackBerry CRM?

We’ve been following iPhone CRM’s progression since the first application was announced, and since then, we’ve been waiting to see whether the iPhone would dominate the enterprise market or remain a sort of “it” status marker. Since the iPhone’s release in 2007, iPhone CRM has come a long way—plenty of vendors are offering sophisticated applications, and these services are only going to improve as SaaS CRM deployments proliferate.

Yet the iPhone is not the enterprise’s favorite smartphone. Alex Williams at ReadWriteWeb wrote today about the enterprise competition between the iPhone and the Android. William’s post discusses some of the coming iPhone innovations that will make it more enterprise friendly. iPhone OS 4 will apparently support multitasking, SSL VPN, and Microsoft Exchange, and will also be wirelessly configurable. Our take on this is that it only means good things for iPhone CRM; the RWW post suggests that these coming improvements will level the iPhone-Android playing field.

And a wise RWW commenter points out that the iPhone’s real battle is with another smartphone: BlackBerry. Yes, the BlackBerry still holds sway with its myriad outages. And even though many CRM vendors are now eschewing BlackBerry development in favor of iPhone CRM, the BlackBerry remains the enterprise darling. RIM has long set the enterprise standard, and continues to be a favorite (seemingly) in large part because of the BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES).

Now, no matter how iPhone CRM has grown over the years, no one is really arguing that the device is more secure than a BlackBerry. And while iPhone CRM is a hot commodity right now, it might never surpass BlackBerry status unless the phones are equally as secure. Aside from the security issue, though, we wonder if there are many other functions that stand between the iPhone and the enterprise throne.

Tags: BlackBerry CRM