Another year, another iPhone. I'm a huge Apple fan - our home now runs four iPods, an AppleTV and a distributed Airport WiFi network to ensure everything can talk to each other, anywhere in the house. I think Apple are not only great at industrial design but also at building consumer electronics devices that 'just work' - that's what I want outside the day job.

However, the advent of the iPhone 3G (or rather the predictable hype around it) has caused many of our customers and partners to question: what about an iPhone version of product x now that the iPhone is enterprise-ready? Are all your corporate customers going to switch from BlackBerry to iPhone? No & No - or at least not until they've used one for a day.

Let's not confuse the addition of 'push' (or more accurately poke 'n pull) email to the iPhone with it becoming enterprise-ready - Windows Mobile has had the same Exchange ActiveSync support for five years and I haven't noticed that make a significant impact on BlackBerry's enterprise market share. I won't even mention hot topics such as manageability and security for large deployments.

But the GTD (Get Things Done) aspect of the BlackBerry is what business users now take for granted - like copy and paste, searching their Inbox (locally or remotely), checking availability and creating a meeting invite - all wirelessly from wherever they happen to be and without a daily battery recharge. This only scratches the surface of the comparison, but you get the idea. A great browser and media experience are not going to compensate for the lack of day-to-day business productivity. That's what won BlackBerry the enterprise market.

This hype has also caught some of the more vocal amongst the BlackBerry developer community who have been the source of some unrest for a while. Yes, Apple have done a great job of creating a powerful development environment incorporating a visual UI designer and a distribution mechanism that allows developers to easily make a living (albeit giving 30% to Mr Jobs), but once again it's aimed at Apple's core market - the consumer. How about Bluetooth integration, background processes and secure enterprise push - all of which are the bread and butter of our enterprise applications - nowhere to be seen in the iPhone SDK.

The BlackBerry developer experience will improve and RIM are listening - but as anyone in software knows - it's a little harder and takes a little longer to evolve an established mobile platform of over 3 years as opposed to starting from scratch. There are many changes afoot though - new APIs, more powerful hardware and a new Developers' Forum & Developer Conference already announced. I would therefore caution BlackBerry developers to really look under the hood of the iPhone SDK before considering its viability - just as with the business BlackBerry user - we also take many things for granted in creating mobile enterprise applications that 'just work'.

I therefore don't see the iPhone 3G in the same messianic light that many do - however Apple have done what Apple have always done best - redefined a product segment and excited the retail sector and its consumers through powerful marketing, strong industrial design and excellent usability - but as Yoda would say, "enterprise-ready, it is not".

UPDATE: Gartner just released an in-depth report on the iPhone 3G for Enterprise Use.