Orange helps Apple in BlackBerry battle

The BlackBerry has traditionally held the market for business users, but as the new kid on the block, Apple’s iPhone is touting itself as the next, and best, business mobile device.

Until now the BlackBerry has been the dominant handheld device in the business market, selling 65 million handsets on business contracts worldwide since its launch in 2002, but this is changing.

Full page adverts highlighting business apps available on the iPhone have appeared in the national press recently, a sign that Apple is keen to muscle in on business territory. And with Orange now granted the right to distribute iPhones, the number of iPhone owners is set to grow significantly.

Of the 90,000 apps lining the shelves of Apple’s App Store, 20 per cent have been developed for business use. In comparison five per cent of BlackBerry’s 2000 apps are listed for business use, despite the device being specifically developed for that market.

Apple’s enviably hip image is also a major attraction for companies keen to bask in its reflected brand glory by creating apps for the device. Yet marketers could be unwise to forsake other handsets in favour of the iPhone.

Low risk marketing

Businesses which have taken early advantage of the platform for B2B marketing have recognised that developing an app is a relatively low-risk experiment. Travelodge has targeted the iPhone specifically to attract business customers. With the aim of doubling its business trade Travelodge launched iBooker, a free GPS-based app last March which allows users to find and book a room at one of Travelodge’s nearest hotels.

Aiden Cook, managing director of iBooker creator, Sense, says that although iPhone users are naturally more inclined to download and use apps than other mobile device owners, it is short-sighted for marketers to focus only on Apple products. “Rather than looking at iPhone apps people should look at the whole mobile market as aside from iPhone coding the design and function of an app is very similar across devices.” Cook says that Vodafone has been keen for clients to create apps for its devices, perhaps aware of Apple’s dominance of the apps market.

Brand exposure on the move

Apps have to have a function whatever platform they run on; no one wants to feel that they are marketing tools. An example of a good app, says Frank Lord, EMEA managing director for e-commerce software solutions firm ATG, would be an iPhone app for small to medium sized businesses based in the field that allow users to interact with a brand everyday, such as Screwfix or B&Q.

“A site manager would find an app very useful if they needed to buy supplies from a trade counter on the go,” explains Lord. “At the moment most are in their 50s and tend to use simple mobile devices and drive to a depot but we have to be ready for the huge group of 20-34 year olds in the industry.”

Lord warns that a B2B iPhone app marketing revolution will not happen overnight, especially when its major target is desk-bound employees. It is, he says, more important to develop a website that fits the device most used by your target market.

However Omniture vice president of marketing Neil Morgan is unabashed in his love for Apple products, “It’s my favourite gadget and probably the brand icon of the decade.” Marketers, say Morgan, are not going to be doing any harm by being associated with such a brand. Omniture’s SiteCatalyst regularly features in the top 10 most popular iPhone business apps.

Function over device

Co-founder of mobile website software provider, Bemoko, Matt Diss warns marketers enamoured with iPhones are at risk of ignoring the 98 per cent of mobile users who don’t own the device. “Ultimately Travelodge are excluding most people from booking with them.” More important, Diss says, is that as web browsers become more sophisticated, they will behave more like apps, which is why investing in mobile-friendly websites is wise.

Digital marketing company iCrossing launched the free social media monitoring iPhone app SayWhat? in October. Rachel Pasqua director of mobile strategy at iCrossing says that in America iPhones account for 60 per cent of all mobile web traffic, “So while the numbers of iPhone users are still relatively small, these users eat a ton of data. To us they represent a chance to hone our application development skills with a test bed of very savvy and demanding early adopters.” iCrossing plans to launch a SayWhat? app that supports BlackBerry, Android, Palm and even Symbian in due time.

The trick to creating an app for any hand held device is putting the user before the technology, says Pasqua. “You see a lot of apps coming out that are built around the function of the iPhone rather than the user and we suspect they are deleted pretty fast.”

Jeremy Copp, CEO of mobile marketing specialist Rapid Mobile, says customers should associate a service with a brand. “For example, a ‘Kinko’s Office Finder’ application installed on a mobile phone might present a logo onscreen providing brand exposure and real value for a business user looking for a printers whilst at a trade show,” explains Copp, who adds that apps provide an opportunity to deliver high quality display advertising messages.

The fact is that iPhone users are more loyal than BlackBerry users, and whereas roughly 98 per cent of iPhone users have downloaded an app, the figure stands at 68 per cent for BlackBerry owners.

Omniture’s Morgan says the next step in the evolution of the iPhone app will be how to monetise them, but at present18 of the 20 most popular business apps are free.
Cook thinks eventually all mobile providers will be able to stock iPhone. However with Google’s Android operating system expected to overtake the iPhone, BlackBerry and Windows Mobile by 2012 it would be unwise to be blinded by Apple’s brand completely.

 

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