This interesting article making the point of how the Apple iPhone is going to be such a great business tool for professionals on-the-go.

“Developers and users alike are going to be very surprised and pleased at how great [business] applications look and work on [the] iPhone

This is a little overstated, I think. The iPhone is a nice shiney new toy that we would all love to play with a little. When it comes to business apps, though, professionals need it to be more about function than form. This pretty much negates half of what the iPhone has to offer. When it comes right down to it, the Treo is a superior business tool out of the box. The only real advantage that I see in the iPhone is that it has a superior built-in Safari browser.

With this browser, online applications have an easy way to say that their application works on the iPhone. It’s already fully capable of displaying and executing all the fancy AJAX and Javascript stuff that we have come to love in our applications. The AIMpromote CRM Software application is web-based, and is fully iPhone compatible just as-is. We haven’t needed to change anything. That’s nice, but it’s hardly novel.

We will see that with its inflated price and it’s almost standard functionality that there are other products on the market that will serve the business community more efficiently. From an Internet marketing standpoint, I think we will be adding an iPhone logo on our site to state that it’s compatible. This will really just be a marketing move though, as there was no actual work involved on our end to make it work on this platform.

If I were your boss would I buy you an iPhone? Maybe, but it wouldn’t be because it’s such a great business tool. The Nokia N800 is a far superior product at a lower price point. It has all the necessary business functionality with a price point $100 less than the iPhone. If you want something fun to play with, then get the iPhone. If you are looking for cost-benefit and ROI, get the Treo or the N800.

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