iPhone News Updated

Apple could face an uphill battle convincing big businesses to abandon the BlackBerry in favour of its iPhone mobile handset, according to a study released yesterday.

An analysis of responses from 105 chief information officers by Sanford Bernstein, the US investment house, found just two planned to roll out Apple’s new mobile handset in their businesses in the next 12 months.

The findings, part of a broader study that found a more conservative outlook for IT spending this year compared with 2007, suggest that cracking the business market could be a challenge for Apple, which hopes to sell 10m iPhone handsets by the end of this year.

“Our CIO survey suggests that corporate iPhone use will be driven by employees purchasing their own iPhones, rather than company-wide deployments,” wrote Toni Sacconaghi, an analyst at Bernstein Research. “If this persists, it may ultimately limit iPhone penetration into the corporate space.”

However, it is unclear whether difficulty penetrating the business market would have a significant impact on Apple’s iPhone strategy.

“I think most investors are looking to the iPhone as being principally a consumer device,” said Mr Sacconaghi.

Apple declined to comment on the survey, but noted that 35 per cent of Fortune 500 companies had agreed to participate in a testing programme for business software on the iPhone.

Apple has traditionally done little to promote its products to business. Instead, it has focused on the consumer market, where the success of the iPod music player has helped transform it into one of the world’s leading consumer brands.

But the company is taking a different tack with the iPhone. This month, as it unveiled a new 3G version, it also released a software update designed to increase the iPhone’s appeal to corporate IT departments.

The update made the iPhone compatible with Microsoft Exchange, a leading business e-mail system, and also introduced remote management of handsets - considered essential for business phones.

Companies that responded to the survey had average yearly revenues of $3.6bn, according to Bernstein.