News, Reviews and more from Australia's Macintosh Authority
News, Reviews and more from Australia's Macintosh Authority
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At the moment, Research In Motion's BlackBerry is very much the dominant player in the corporate smartphone market -- a position it has held for some time and in which it is well and truly entrenched. It's the game to beat if Apple wants to boast about enterprise adoption of the iPhone, and so far it's got little more than a few careful sniffs. One of those sniffers, however, happens to be one of the biggest companies on the planet.
According to a report on ZDNet.com.au, HSBC is considering rolling out 200,000 iPhones to its global workforce, which numbers in excess of 330,000 with a technology budget of $US6 billion. Presently HSBC issues its employees with BlackBerry handsets.
While other companies have expressed doubts over the iPhone's suitability for enterprise deployment, largely because of the BlackBerry's superior e-mail capabilities, HSBC CIO for Australia and New Zealand said Apple had been "pretty smart with the design".
At this point, of course, HSBC is doing little more than investigating the technology, as it does with any new technological innovation that may or may not assist its business. Like many corporations it's got an installed infrastructure built around BlackBerry and shifting that would not be trivial.
However, the mere fact of HSBC's interest (along with a reported 165 companies on the Fortune 500) does demonstrate that the iPhone is beginning to garner attention from the big end of town.
Apple sold 2.3 million Macs and 22.1 million iPods during the holiday shopping season, helping the company turn a $US1.58-billion profit during its fiscal first quarter. The Mac totals mark the third consecutive quarter that Apple has set a quarterly sales record for its desktops and laptops. The Mac totals mark the third consecutive quarter that Apple has set a quarterly sales record for its desktops and laptops. For the quarter ended December 31, Apple reported a profit of $US1.76 a share on revenue of $US9.6 billion.
Jim Dalrymple,Philips Michaels and Peter Cohen | Jan 23, 2008
Apple has quietly discontinued its Xserve RAID enterprise storage product line. It disappeared from the online Apple Store shortly after the company introduced Xsan 2 this morning. Industry analysts don’t believe the discontinuation will have a negative impact on the company’s enterprise market. Apple struck a deal with Promise Technology to have its RAID systems qualified for use with Xsan 2, so users are not left out in the cold. Apple said the Promise product delivers on the features its customers have been asking for and it also delivers significantly greater performance.
Jim Dalrymple | Feb 20, 2008
This morning Apple announced a strong push to help companies incorporate the iPhone into their enterprise environment, putting RIM's popular BlackBerry handheld devices squarely in its sights. The changes will come in a forthcoming release of iPhone software. During an event held at the company's Cupertino headquarters, Apple senior vice president of product marketing Phil Schiller announced the company's plans. "We've been hard at work trying to understand what it takes to bring the iPhone out across the enterprise," he told guests. The list of features that Apple describes as important to enterprise end users includes "push-based" e-mail, calendar info and contact management; additional support for Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) including Cisco IPsec; and two-factor authentication, certificates and identities.
Peter Cohen | Mar 7, 2008
Apple has acquired a fabless semiconductor company, PA Semi, according to a report at Forbes.com. PA Semi designs energy efficient processors based on the Power architecture that Apple used in its Macintosh computers for many years before adopting Intel's x86 chips.
Mikael Ricknas | Apr 23, 2008
