Category Archives: iphone

Can the iPhone be used as a business tool?

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iPhone4We know that the Apple iPhone has been a huge success.  You only have to look around to see large numbers of young people playing all manner of games, listening to music, texting and calling, all from their iPhone.

But what is less clear is how useful the iPhone can be to a business user.  Can the iPhone really help a business man or woman in their job, can it add value and functionality to your work?

How the iPhone has become a powerful business tool

The answer is an emphatic yes, the iPhone can add a tremendous amount of value and functionality to your work… all it takes is an understanding of what the Apple iPhone can really do for you.  Especially the applications, but other factors such as the ability to use email via the Microsoft Exchange servers are also important.

First of all understand that the latest version of the iPhone, the GS, is a powerful minicomputer.  It used to be that the original versions of the iPhone lacked the raw processing power that many people required of their phones, allowing the Blackberry to gain a reputation as being more important for business users… that has now changed.

Because of this upgrade in processing power the iPhone is able to run numerous applications at once with a massively reduced lag time, making powerful business applications a much more viable option that previously.

This has brought the attention back onto the applications as they become more and more viable and useful.  Each application is a piece of software that can be added to the iPhone to increase functionality, and adding the right applications to suit your needs is important.

  • CRM’s.  Customer Resource Managers are databases many businesses use to keep all the information on their customers and clients up to date.  This sort of information can be vital in a variety of manners, including for such business people as a travelling sales person who will need information on the client they are going to meet.  The iPhone has a number of CRM developers on board, such big players as Oracle, and so can offer a wide range of databases that can help business people keep up to date with their clients whilst on the move.
  • Reports.  Using a combination of email support and easy download/upload of documents it is easy to upload reports onto the iPhone for reading whilst travelling.  This can help save time and stop a commute being a wasted journey – by doing your research and reading straight from your mobile phone.
  • Research.  The iPhone offers full web capabilities, rather than simply WAP technology.  This means you get access to all the web for your research – not just the small samples or basic sites that most phones give you – and since it is all mobile technology it allows you to be more mobile with your research than you would with a laptop.

An iPhone isn’t going to take the place of a computer any time soon, but it does add a lot of power and functionality to a business person’s armour.

Why the iPhone has become so successful

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What is the first phone that you think of when it comes to the most up-to-date technology and style?  What is the first mobile phone that you think of when you are wondering what to get next?  Odds are it is the Apple iPhone.  Even if you have decided that you don’t want one it will have entered your head to dismiss – and the reason for that is because the iPhone is hugely successful.

But why?  What makes the Apple iPhone stand out from the crowd of ‘next gen’ mobiles that we see on the market place today?  What fuels it’s success?

Why the iPhone has Become so Successful

There are a wide range of factors that are helping to push the iPhone beyond the success of any of it’s competitors, and such a vast number if reasons can’t be covered here, so instead let us look at the most important factors in the growth and growth of the iPhone revolution.

  • The Apple Brand.  The Apple brand is huge.  From Macs to iPods and much more besides, Apple is a massive player in the consumer electronics industry.  More importantly it has a massive, almost fanatical, following that love to ‘buy Apple’.  These evangelists of the brand not only help drive up sales by buying anything and everything to do with Apple but also sing it’s praises from every point they can. Blogs, forums, word of mouth – all will see Apple fans talking about how great the products, such as the iPhone, are.

The Apple brand is also a trusted name by those that are less fanatical, and as such having the brand behind the     iPhone means that it can trade on that trust in a way that a lot of other technology companies can’t

  • Technology.  Apple is at the cutting edge of a lot of media technologies and as such the iPhone has benefited from this with a lot of technology integration for software and hardware that were first developed for the best selling iPod and Apple Macs.
  • Applications.  One of the major factors in the growth of the iPhone has been the apps functions.  Basically an application is a piece of software that gets added to the iPhone and then adds some sort of functionality.  It could be something as simple as a currency conversion software to using GPS systems to allow you to see your position on various mapping software’s.
  • Integration.  The iPhone can integrate with your current technology seamlessly.  It is easily added to your various Apple accounts such as iTunes, but can also directly link to your email via such things as the Microsoft exchange server.  Certain apps can also be used in such a manner, for example using various CRM databases to synchronise, allowing you to take the information on the road.
  • Marketing.  Let us be simple, Apple have made a great job of marketing the phone as a next generation, lifestyle handset that has led to many people wanting it simply from the adverts they have seen on TV, in magazines etc.

Apple removes adult applications for iPhone

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no-porn-ipodApple’s decision to remove adult software applications from its App Store angered developers while their revenues are going down with these stricter policies. Apple said that will continue to ban these software apps to distribute a cleaner content to its customers and developers will be requested to apply changes to their applications and remove the inappropriate material, in order to be distributed by the company.
Since Friday, thousands of adult-related content has been eliminate from the App Store due to some customers’ complaints. Phil Schiller, Apple’s vice-president of product marketing said for NY Times that the main reason for this removal campaign is the constant number of objections coming from parents that are aware of what their children could watch on personal iPhones or from women that find the content too offensive.
Developers are also mad because these removals somehow bypassed some well-known adult apps, like Playboy’s ones. Apple replied that some “well-known” companies’ apps will be still available in App Stores as well as if they had “previously published material”.
Jon Atherton, a developer from Australia related for BBC that since this eradication campaign brought down his revenues from £320 a day to a roughly £5 a day. He added that on Friday Apple sent an e-mail which, in essence sound like this: “thanks very much but we don’t need you anymore”. As a piece of advice, Jon said that Apple would better create an adult section instead of banning these popular apps.
App Store holds about 140,000 applications for its customers and has played a major role in iPhone’s achievements.