Enterprise Mobility News This Week (and a survey)

Friday, April 30th, 2010 John Gallagher, Sr. Public Relations Manager

Before I start, I want to tell you that we are gearing up for our next Mobile Workforce Report, but we need your help! We survey mobile workers to get us some of that great data – what smartphone you prefer, what tools keep you productive (and balanced), and more. We are raffling off a Flip Camera to those that participate. It should only take a few minutes.

Go to the survey >>

This week, there were three major news stories in the world of enterprise mobility. First, H-P said on Wednesday that it is buying Palm for $1.2 billion, a move that puts H-P squarely in the smartphone game.

Second, RIM unveiled the new Blackberry Bold 9650 and the petite Pearl 36 smartphones, and Blackberry Voice over Wi-Fi as part of its Wireless Electronics Symposium.

The announcements did not receive the same amount of attention as iPhonegate (the stolen iPhone prototype and the Gizmodo blog), but there were some interesting tidbits in them…

1. RIM continues to add features to appeal to the consumer market. This is a smart move. We are seeing more enterprise features in the iPhone, and it makes sense that there should be additional consumer features in the Blackberry smartphone.

2. Most interesting was the cool new Blackberry Voice over Wi-Fi, which works with Cisco Unified Communications Manager to allow the mobile worker to use a single work number between their landline desk phone and BlackBerry smartphone over a Wi-Fi connection.

3. Apple set the date for its Worldwide Developer Conference for June 7. Speculation is already starting that Apple may introduce the next version of the iPhone there.

4. For more Apple news, Forbes is reporting that Apple has surpassed Motorola as the US #1 phone maker.

5. Finally, like we don’t need to worry about any more devices coming into the Enterprise, 95 new handsets were announced globally by 26 vendors.