Well, the mobile apps world has just been stood on its head. The RIM BlackBerry, long the standard for mobile enterprise workers, is now being seriously threatened by the iPhone, which is going to run Oracle business applications.
It’s a combination of mobile enterprise underdogs taking on the establishment, consisting of BlackBerry on the wireless hardware side and heavyweights IBM and SAP on the mobile software side.
But the only surprise about the announcement is its timing: We all knew Oracle was not happy at being beaten to the mobile workplace by archrival SAP and by IBM, and Apple has been trying to crack the enterprise to widen its market.
In March, Apple opened its SDK to developers, and got Salesforce.com to demo an app on the iPhone. Couldn’t make the hint any stronger without clubbing people over the head with a two-by-four. So we all knew enterprise apps were on the way soon.
The next few weeks should be fun.
