Forrester Research says iPhone and iPad 'secure enough' for most businesses

That's a change from 2007 when the iPhone was not a recommendation from most of the IT firms, and many large companies posted a 'keep out' sign for the iPhone. Now Forrester Research in a new report says that the iPhone running iOS 4 and the iPad are 'secure enough' if companies implement the correct security policies and controls.

In the report, Forrester consultant Andrew Jaquith says the iPhone (and iPad) gives enterprises enough security options to enable them to say "yes" instead of "no."

Forrester still says the RIM BlackBerry still rules the roost as far as security goes, because it can be customized and security settings are more fine grained, but the firm add that the iPhones and iPad can be made very secure in an enterprise environment.

That's good news for Apple, and for companies who are seeing increasing pressure to integrate Apple products into their suite of tools. The full report is available to Forrester customers.

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Apple says iPhone and iPad are at use in most Fortune 100 companies

More than 80 percent of Fortune 100 companies are using the iPhone, and about 50 percent of the Fortune 100 are deploying or testing the iPad, Apple revealed Tuesday.

Apple Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook announced those figures during the company's quarterly earnings conference call Tuesday evening. He said that the company is selling iPads and iPhones "as fast as (they) can make them," including those sales to the enterprise market

The iPhone has steadily grown in the enterprise market since it was first introduced in 2007. But Apple's comments on Tuesday would seem to suggest that the iPad has found faster adoption in the enterprise market.

The remaining question is: What are those businesses using the iPad for? Apple's executives did not provide any indication, though numerous companies have publicly embraced the device, giving some idea of where the iPad is being used.

Earlier this month, Wells Fargo revealed it initially bought 15 iPads used to demonstrate products at an investor conference. While the company spent two years looking at the iPhone, it spent just two weeks to approve the iPad for use. The company's experience with the iPad has led it to buy "a bunch" more.

In addition, Mercedes-Benz has used the iPad to sell cars, allowing sales people to handle credit applications on the touchscreen tablet device. The company is now considering using iPads at all 350 of its U.S. dealerships.

And SAP has developed its own iPad application, allowing managers to approve shipping of customer orders. The company also has a handful of other custom applications planned for development.  

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Your Friend is sharing the "Apple and HTC lead charge as smartphone market looks set to grow and grow" article with you.

A recent survey of 4,028 US consumers by ChangeWave has thrown up a number of illuminating statistics, which you might consider as predictable as they are informative. The chief takeaway is that people are keen on buying smartphones like never before, with 16% of respondents saying that they'll be taking the plunge within the next 90 days, which marks the biggest increase in the survey's history. Secondly, and crucially for vendor loyalists, Apple and HTC seem to be the biggest beneficiaries (or are they the stimulants?) of this interest, with both improving their share by over 50 percent between March and June of this year. RIM and Motorola have taken a tumble in that same timespan, while Palm has sadly failed to register even a single percentage point. We can definitely see the Droid X and BlackBerry 6 remedying things for the big boys, but Palm's route out of ignominy seems a little less straightforward. You'll find a chart of customer satisfaction -- dominated by Apple in imperious fashion -- after the break, and the full breakdown at the source link.

Via: Electronista
Source: ChangeWave Research

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Company switches from BlackBerry to iPhone, new OS is key

During the next few months, Varian Medical’s Matt Morse plans to live out of a suitcase, venturing around the world for the sole purpose of ushering the iPhone (and maybe the iPad) into his enterprise. He’ll spend time developing a strategy for the iPhone that fits into his company’s existing IT infrastructure and meets security and budget requirements, followed by a series of test cases.

If all goes well, sometime next year he’ll begin to deploy the iPhone and replace the BlackBerry for field service workers. “There are so many facets to look at in a new platform,” says Morse, senior IT admin at Varian Medical, a manufacturer of medical devices and software for hospitals and clinics in 60 countries. “I think the discovery phase and proof of concept will take at least six months.”

When Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled iOS 4, formerly known as iPhone OS 4.0, earlier this year, CIOs and tech analysts cheered iOS 4’s deep enterprise support. iOS 4 promised wireless distribution of in-house apps, multitasking, app and email data protection, mobile device management upgrades, and support for SSL VPN via apps from Juniper and Cisco, among other features.

But iOS 4’s expected release to the general public this summer won’t open the enterprise floodgates for the iPhone right away. Rather, it will only signal the beginning of the iPhone’s long march into the corporate world. For techies like Morse, much work still needs to be done.

The security equation changes

For the past five years, Varian employees have carried BlackBerrys to help them do their jobs. Varian’s BlackBerry users are on the frontlines in both sales and field service, tapping into a Microsoft Exchange collaboration messaging system with hooks into SharePoint, Office Communicator and VoIP.
Varian developed an app called MSO, or mobile services online, that lets BlackBerry field technicians securely connect to SAP on the backend. With MSO, they can handle customer-service tickets without having to fire up a laptop. They can look up schedules, dispatch orders, and allocate resources. MSO’s end result: response times within 10 minutes.

When the iPhone debuted three years ago, Varian executives warmed to the beautiful interface. Every year, more and more employees asked for an iPhone, Morse says. With the release of the iPhone 3G, Morse and his team had to officially support it. Today, one out of three mobile devices at Varian is an iPhone.
But none of the approximately 1,600 field technicians around the world are allowed to turn in their BlackBerries for iPhones—at least, not yet.

The reason? Field technicians absolutely depend on MSO, and MSO is not on the iPhone because of lingering security, reliability and management concerns. “BlackBerry has the enterprise integration with BES to really give us a securely and remotely managed device,” Morse says. “Policies can be enforced, and we can guarantee a lot more uptime and monitor it better than we can with an Active Sync-type device like the iPhone.”

But with its touted security and management features, iOS 4 has the potential to bring the iPhone on par with the BlackBerry, Morse says. Of course, he’ll have to wait for the general release to know for sure. “I’ve looked at the early SDK, but we don’t play with beta versions here,” Morse says. “iPhone 4.0 gives us the opportunity to begin the real discovery of the device capabilities.”

Another upside: Varian has been using Zenprise MobileManager for BlackBerry management, which helps IT departments identify who is using a mobile device, how the device is accessing the network, and what version of the OS is installed. Zenprise MobileManager now supports the iPhone.

Before Morse can give the iPhone the green light for field service technicians, he’ll also need to standardize on the iPhone 3GS because of its device encryption—that is, the current standardization on iPhone 3G won’t work for field technicians who require a higher level of security.

End goal: Quickly-deployed web apps

Yet security and management are just part of iPhone enterprise adoption. The iPhone represents an entirely new development platform and services architecture. Morse will have to consider not just the iPhone but what it will bring forth in the future (and whether or not Apple and the iPhone can handle it).
For Morse, though, that’s a good problem.

He gets excited, for instance, about the iPhone’s potential as an end-point to Web apps. The beauty of Web apps, he says, is a faster release cycle. Think of a dynamic MSO. iPhones and iPads “would be a rock star of a solution,” Morse says. “We’re not talking about just a mobile device with some glamorous interface technology, we’re talking about having something that lets people do work and solve problems and that can be reliably revisited over and over again.”

But first Morse will have to meet with field service managers, engineers and installers around the world to find out how an iPhone or iPad can improve their jobs. Can the iPhone’s geo-location help them allocate resources better? Will mobile social networking help? What data should the iPhone track? Can the iPhone facilitate customer interaction?

“There’s an amazing amount of discovery because the capability [of the iPhone] is so large,” Morse says. “Then we have to pare it down into a viable scope, otherwise you’re going to shoot the moon and you’re never going to get anything deployed.”

[Tom Kaneshige is a senior writer for CIO.com in Silicon Valley.]

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iPhone 4 and the Cloud

There is a race going on among the suppliers of smartphones, such as Apple Computer's recently announced iPhone 4, to create handheld devices that can replace both a mobile telephone, a GPS, a music and video player and, for some functions, a mobile computer. My colleagues here on ZDnet are all over this announcement.

http://www.cloudtweaks.com/2010/06/iphone-4-and-the-cloud/

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Your Friend is sharing the "'iPhone vs Android' report finds Apple has three times Google's market share" article with you.

It's oftentimes easy for us to get swept up in Android mania and forget that Google's mobile platform is still in its infancy. Then we get cold hard numbers like these -- showing iPhone OS owning 28 percent of the US smartphone market and closing in on RIM's leading 35 percent -- and we face up to the realization that Android handsets still account for less than one in every ten smartphones owned by Americans today. In spite of collecting 28 percent of all consumer smartphone purchases in the first quarter of 2010 (according to NPD), Google's OS was only able to climb up a couple of percentage points in terms of total market share, showing just how long a road lies ahead of its world-conquering plans. Guess that now explains why Apple's response to the earlier numbers was so nonchalant.

Other intriguing figures include a high rate of loyalty among iPhone OS and Android users, with 80 percent of the former and 70 percent of the latter expressing a preference for the same OS in their next phone -- both rather shaming Microsoft and RIM's numbers, which were a mediocre 34 and 47 percent, respectively. Funnily enough, despite its inflammatory title, this report finds Android and iPhone users are more similar to each other than anyone else -- an uncomfortable fact for both parties to deal with, we're sure. The source link contains some more demographic comparisons, so why not go check them out and drop some sage analysis for us in the comments?

Remember, MobileIron allows you to provision, secure and manage all of these Smartphone platforms from your proviate cloud infrastructure. Contact Cloud Distribution for further details.

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iPhone still ahead of Android in Europe

iPhone is still beating Android in Europe despite the Google OS overtaking it in the US, according to the latest count by the market research boffins at Gartner. Symbian and Blackberry are still ahead of both of them. Dive into the figures and you'll find the future doesn't look so bright for Microsoft…

Gartner says twice as many iPhones flew off the shelves as Android handsets across Europe in the first quarter of 2010 helping Apple retain its spot as the third biggest seller of smartphones worldwide. Meanwhile Android leapfrogged over Windows Mobile to come in at number 4 with phones like the HTC Desire helping to deliver 5.2 million sales.

Symbian is still by far the largest smartphone OS. 24.1m Symbian-toting handsets were sold in during the same period but its market share is slipping, dropping from 48.8 percent to 44.3 percent. That's hardly a massive decline and we've got our fingers crossed that Symbian 3 and the Nokia N8 will deliver.

Blackberry maker RIM is still holding on to the number 2 spot and also has the potential to deliver something exciting with the Blackberry 6 OS. It's Microsoft that really needs to worry having dropped into 5th place with Windows Mobile phones shifting just 3.7 million units. Windows Phone 7 really needs to pull out the stops.

Make your prediction: do you think iPhone 4.0 will keep Apple ahead of Android? Or does the sheer variety of Google OS-packing handsets mean thjavascript:void(0)e 'droid is destined to win?

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Android Now Outselling iPhone

Smartphones carrying Google’s Android operating system outsold the iPhone in the first quarter of 2010, according to new research out today from NPD.

During the quarter, Android (Android) handsets accounted for 28% of smartphone sales, beating out iPhone OS and its 21% share. BlackBerry was the bestselling OS, with its devices capturing 36% of the market. NPD attributes the shift to strong sales of the Motorola Droid and Droid Eris.

The news follows a report last month from AdMob that showed Android’s share of the mobile OS market had actually grown past that of iPhone OS, at least in the U.S. Worldwide, iPhone OS still has a big lead, however, with 46% share compared to Android’s 25%. AdMob’s data is based on ad requests across mobile websites and applications.

With the new Droid Incredible reportedly selling quite well, this trend may continue in the near-term. However, the fourth-generation iPhone is expected to debut next month. Rumors that the iPhone will soon come to Verizon also continue to intensify, with that carrier’s customers indicating they are ready to welcome the device with open arms. If all of that happens, the numbers could quickly swing back in Apple’s favor. Stay tuned.

original article - Mashable - http://mashable.com/2010/05/10/android-outselling-iphone/

iPhone OS 4.0: The Enterprise Mobility Perspective

So the day many of us have been waiting for is upon us. Apple just announced iPhone OS 4.0.

Having just finished watching the presentation on a couple of different web sites, I came away with some mixed feelings. As usual, details were rather light on the topics that mattered to me most (the enterprise mobility perspective), to focus instead on the things that Apple understands best – consumer desire.

There were some interesting side statistics that came out.

* About 450,000 iPads have been sold to date. That’s pretty impressive for something that is so new. It certainly doesn’t match the iPhone numbers, but let’s not forget that the Tablet PC is a “new” concept for the consumer.
* Speaking of the iPhone, over 50 MILLION have been sold thus far. All you can say to that is WOW.
* The App Store has over 185,000 apps on it. No count on how many are actually useful ;-)
* The mobile web. 64% of mobile web traffic takes place on the iPhone. No wonder AT&T has gotten so much bad press in the last 12 months around its network

Now onto the 4th iteration of the OS. First off, it definitely takes visual cues from the iPad. This is not at all surprising, and is in fact very logical in terms of providing a consistent user experience. There are also 1,500 new APIs that are being made available to developers. For the most part, they will fall under seven “Tentpoles:”

Tentpole #1 – Multitasking

Hallelujah! Funny how last March, the folks at Apple were telling us that multitasking was bad for the consumer. We in the enterprise have been waiting for this since the very advent of the iPhone. Interestingly these services are being provided as APIs. The Multitasking Services include:

1. Background Audio – OK, so you can now play audio in the background. Unless we’re talking about audio tutorials, I’m not sure how this is relevant to the enterprise.
2. VoIP – The fact that the new OS can support VoIP in a multitasking fashion is huge. Not surprisingly, Apple showed off the Skype application, but I can think of just a couple of companies (you know…like Cisco, Avaya, Microsoft, Siemens, IBM, just to name a few) that just may get excited at how this can now make Mobile UC on the iPhone real.
3. Background Location – Again, this will have huge potential. The easiest one that came to mind was for contextual wireless expense management. Imagine where you have an IT policy that has been set up by your company that prevents data roaming based upon your GPS locator. This is not new for other platforms, but does bring the iPhone up to par in this context.
4. Push Notifications - This was touched upon so lightly because there wasn’t anything new here really.
5. Local Notifications – The biggest deal I got from this was that it will no longer need to put a strain on the Apple servers (not that they can’t afford to buy a bunch of servers). I’m not sure yet how that will impact users.
6. Task Completion – This has some good potential in my opinion for the field/fleet service sector. Imagine as an insurance adjuster being able to take a picture of the claim, start the upload process and continue filling out the rest of your forms. That’s a nice time saver, I guess.
7. Fast App Switching – What…Versus slow app switching?

What wasn’t touched upon was multi-THREADING. Will applications be able to fully interact with each other? That could eventually pose a problem with application compatibility, or worse viruses and malware. My sense is we’ll all have to keep a close eye on that.

Tentpole #2 -Folders

All I can say is, it’s about the hell time. However the demo does not go into any details on how folders will play out for files vs. applications.

Tentpole #3 – Enhanced eMail

1. More than one Exchange account - This is very nice, although I can think of another company that had done so about a year ago.
2. Threaded conversations – OK, again, nice to have, but nothing earth shattering
3. Fast account switching – See point #2 above
4. Open attachments with applications – Now this has potential. I’m thinking about how productivity application companies such as QuickOffice can certainly use this kind of functionality to their advantage. You have to wonder if there will ever be a Microsoft Office available for the iPhone (doubt it).

Tentpole #4 – iBooks

I must admit to you that I’m not an avid reader of books. Sometimes, I’ll go back and read a classic that I haven’t looked at since my university days, but beyond that, I read enough during the day. When I want to relax and read, then I go open my beloved Economist magazine.

But now, onto the good stuff…..

Tentpole #5 – Enterprise Features

And at 10:43, some words I have been waiting to hear for ages:

1. Even better data protection – Well, frankly that’s not hard to say
2. Mobile device management – No details provided
3. Wireless app distribution – Again, little to now details
4. Multiple exchange accounts (we talked about this earlier)
5. Exchange Server 2010 - OK, this is good, but will the new OS support more of the built-in policies? The challenge though comes from Point #4. If you have more than one Exchange account, which one governs the device?
6. SSL VPN support – Uhm….OK. I’m not a security expert.

But at 10:46 they were on to the next Tentpole. Three whopping minutes spent on Enterprise features. Not surprising in one respect given the audience, but to have just glossed over such important topics makes me wonder how deep the improvements are actually going to be. Now mind you, I have heard that some of the data protection improvements are very large improvements, but I can’t speak to those yet.
Tentpole #6 – Game Center

I am behind the times and don’t know anything about games since the days of “Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, B, A, START” (kudos to you if you know what I am referring to)
Tentpole #7 – iAd

We all knew it was coming. The Toy Story 3 and Michael Jordan demos were rather impressive. I’ll admit that I also liked the not so thinly veiled dig to Adobe with the comment on it all being done in HTML5. While I am not a fan of mobile advertising, I do see a very interesting opportunity for B2C applications…or perhaps even B2B2C applications coming down the pike.

The Target example is very much along the lines of what I was thinking. Imagine being able to create your own application that will then be able to sense your location, as well as the current inventories you have in your stores and provide you advertisements or mobile coupons on the fly.
Availability

Not surprisingly, this will be available in the summer. And at 11:02 am PDT, my device became all but obsolete….especially in the enterprise. How do you ask? The iPhone 3G will not support multitasking. I’m not sure I understand what hardware specifications are different in 3GS and 3G that would prevent it (I guess it’s not powerful enough). Candidly, this feels more like a way to get people and their companies to go spend money on new devices…maybe even a iPhone 4G should that be announced soon.

So all in all a mixed bag. There are some certainly welcome additions to the iPhone OS by throwing out so many buzzwords in the three minutes that made up Tentpole #5. However, with all things, the devil is in the details and I am sure we’ll learn more soon enough.

Don't forget, if you need to manage a large scale trial or deployment of iPhone or iPad, www.mobileiron.co.uk can assist in the provisioning, security and ongoing management of your estate as well as supporting other Smartphones such as Blackberry, Windows Mobile, Symbian, PalmPre & Android.

Are you excited about iPhone OS 4.0? Sound off in the comments.

Original Article - http://theemf.org/2010/04/08/iphone-os-4-0-the-enterprise-mobility-perspective/

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Is the iPad viable as an Enterprise business tool ?

The iPad is getting a reputation as being good for many things — media consumption, mobile messaging and games — to name a few.

It certainly does all of those things but even before getting my hands on one I started thinking about the iPad in the enterprise. Not so much as a laptop replacement for the workforce, but as a specialized tool for certain functions that I believe the iPad would be good at doing.

After using the iPad for a few days (I wish!), I am more convinced than ever that there is a place in big companies to take advantage of the special features of the device. I can see customer support employees using special apps to fill out forms as they deal with customers on the phone. The touch interface could be leveraged to good effect doing this, as many support departments operate with “scripts” written to handle problems over the phone.

The iPad is perfect for this type of repetitive data entry with the proper app running the show. The on-screen keyboard is adequate for the short data entries that don’t fit a scripted mode, while common entries can be programmed to mere button taps. The iPad is perfect for this, with only a light development effort needed to bring common tasks like this to life as an app.

I really believe that IT support staff can use the iPad to troubleshoot employee computer problems. I have spoken to many who do this for a living and they are already using LogMeIn on the iPhone to fix computer problems remotely. Throw in the larger screen of the iPad and this method is an outstanding way to provide this type of support.

Yesterday I ran some errands and found myself in a Target store picking up some items. I carried the iPad in a little case, along with the MiFi for 3G connectivity, just in case. I decided to get a coffee in the Starbucks in the Target, and I sat down to enjoy the drink. I hit the button on the MiFi, and pulled out the iPad to kill some time.

I was having fun in the Starbucks, surfing the web on the iPad, when I remembered I forgot to run a system scan for malware on the ThinkPad back in the home office. I started LogMeIn Ignition (as shown in my video) and logged into the ThinkPad on the iPad. I fired up Microsoft Security Essentials and instigated a full system scan on the ThinkPad. Once that started I logged off and continued my web surfing on the iPad. The system scan was running on the ThinkPad in the office while I was sitting in Starbucks enjoying my coffee.

One nagging question in everyone's mind is "How do we deploy, secure and manages these devices in the field?". MobileIron's Smartphone Device Management platform (distributed in the UK by Cloud Distribution) is able to support iPad out of the box as well as iPhone, WM, Symbian, Android and Blackberry.

I’d love to hear your opinions on the iPad in the workplace. Can you see functions in your company that would be performed well with the iPad? Share it in the comments.

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MobileMe gains Find My iPad, Remote Wipe features for iPad

Apple has extended its popular "Find My iPhone" service to the iPad with its just-announced iPad-friendly features in MobileMe.

Not only will you be able to find your lost iPad, but iPads will also inherit the iPhone's remote wipe capabilities as well as a number of other features carried over from MobileMe.

The new "Find My iPad" will work on both WiFi and 3G-enabled iPads, though it goes without saying that the WiFi-only version will only be findable while connected to a WiFi network. Like Find My iPhone, users can log into MobileMe to see the approximate location of their iPads and even send a message down to it along with a sound to help you (or a friendly passerby) locate the device. As many iPhone owners have discovered, this feature has been a life-saver for travelers and the absent-minded alike, so it's certainly cool that it's now part of the iPad experience as well.

Apple's MobileMe tweaks also include Remote Wipe for iPad. Just like on the iPhone, you can now wipe your sensitive data (notes, e-mails, etc.) from a lost iPad by going through MobileMe, which can be restored later from a backup on your computer. And, of course, MobileMe's other cloud-friendly features also apply here, including bookmark sync, contact sync, and e-mail sync.

With so many people managing one or more computers, one or more phones, and a tablet device in their lives, services like this can be really helpful. And, if you're an iPhone user, the Find My iPhone/iPad and Remote Wipe services will work for both your iPhone and your iPad. Is MobileMe worth the $99/year subscription yet?

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Smartphone users want better access to data

A new survey of U.S. smartphone users reveals a majority of them want to use mobile devices, including tablets like the upcoming Apple iPad, for work as well as personal activities. Yet the same users also see only limited productivity gains because they can access so little of the personal and business information they need.

The online survey polled 2,443 respondents, all adults with mobile phones. Of these, 770 were smartphone users. The study was commissioned by Sybase, which sells several mobile applications for enterprise customers, and conducted by Zogby International, which polled its online panel, a cross section of the U.S. adult population. (You can see the full set of slides here.)

The sample was asked how they would use a tablet device, which has video, office and e-mail applications, citing the iPad as an example. Not very surprisingly, entertainment-related uses were two of the top three picks. Forty-eight percent chose "watching movies, video, television programs" and 35% said they'd do "gaming and other entertainment."

What was surprising was the No.1 use: 52% said they'd use an iPad-like tablet for "conducting work on the device."

Smartphone users are more likely than standard cell phone users to do work-related activities with their phone. Of standard phone users, 46% say they use their phone for both work and personal tasks. But 79% of smartphone users say they do both tasks.

But regardless of the phone, users say they can access only a small fraction of the personal and business data they're interested in. The question asked was this: "How much of your data would you estimate you currently have access to on your mobile phone."

The question could be interpreted in different ways. For example, are users accessing data that only resides on, or has been transferred to, their mobile phone? Or is the phone a means for accessing data that may reside elsewhere on corporate or Web based servers?

However it was understood, users were clear that they want more access to more data. For "personal data" nearly 60% of the respondents say they access less than 10% of it on the phone. Nearly 70% say they access less than 10% of their "work data." Fewer than 1 in 10 respondents say they can access over 50% of both kinds of information.

The results were even worse when the question focused on enterprise-specific applications such as CRM.

The question was: "How much of your company's applications (such as spreadsheet applications, CRM applications and e-mail) would you estimate you currently have access to on your mobile phone?"

Seventy-two percent of the sample estimated less than 10% of these were accessible. Just over 8% estimated they access more than 51% of these applications.

The survey found very modest productivity gains, at least as self-assessed by the respondents. They were asked "Do you think devices such as the smartphone and the iPad make us more or less productive at work?"

Half of the sample selected "somewhat more productive." One quarter chose from several responses, with 9% saying "no difference" and almost the same percentage saying "somewhat less productive." Only 1 in 4 say these devices have us "much more productive."

Original Article - Here

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iPhone hacked at Pwn2Own contest

An iPhone got hacked in just 20 seconds at this week's Pwn2Own hacking contest at CanSecWest 2010, reports Ryan Naraine for ZDnet.

Hackers Vincenzo Iozzo and Ralf Philipp Weinmann demoed an exploit that allowed them to send a target iPhone to a web site that they'd set up online, and then copied off the entire SMS database on the iPhone (including deleted text messages) to their own server. The browser crashed during the hijack, but the hackers say that with a little tweaking, it would even be possible to nab the information without the user ever knowing that an attack had occurred. Halvar Flake also assisted with the hack, and he said that while Apple does have some protection in place for running malicious code on the iPhone, but it's not enough: "The way they implement code-signing is too lenient." You can see more technical information about the hack over on his blog.

The hackers aren't sharing exactly how they did the exploit -- as specified by the contest rules, knowledge of the hack is becoming property of the contest's sponsor, the Tipping Point Zero Day Initiative, who will pass on a report to Apple and only release details once the hole has been fixed. Safari and Internet Explorer 8 both got owned at the same conference, though details about those hacks are both forthcoming -- Tipping Point was offering up US$100,000 in prizes for exploits on these various programs, and it looks like the prize money has been well-earned.

to secure, control and manage iPhones in the enterprise, take a look at MobileIron.

Original Article - Here

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40% of Blackberry users willing to trade in for an iPhone

BlackBerry users may be ready to move on to other smartphone platforms, suggesting that RIM isn't keeping up with consumer demand in its efforts to combat growing encroachment from the likes of iPhone and Android.

In fact, two in five BlackBerry owners plan to swap their current device for an iPhone when it's time to upgrade, according to market researcher firm Crowd Science.

The iPhone has had a lasting effect on the smartphone market, changing the conception of what a smartphone should be almost overnight after the launch of the original iPhone in 2007. Despite RIM's entrenchment among business users, however, the iPhone platform has grown at a faster rate than the BlackBerry over the last year.

Perhaps the trend can be explained by Crowd Science's findings that many are using their smartphones for both personal and business use. Nearly a third of iPhone owners use their device for strictly personal use, versus just 16 percent for BlackBerry users. Just one percent of iPhone owners use their device for business only—no surprise there—so two-thirds are using an iPhone for business and personal use. And, while the BlackBerry has a reputation as the best enterprise mobile device, a scant seven percent of BlackBerrys users dedicate the device to business use only. That leaves over three-quarters of BlackBerry owners using their device for dual purposes.

The iPhone isn't the only platform attracting the attention of BlackBerry users, though. Interest in Android-based devices has grown since the introduction of Google's Nexus One, with 32 percent of BlackBerry users surveyed saying they would swap their current device for a Nexus One.

"These results show that the restlessness of BlackBerry users with their current brand hasn't just been driven by the allure of iPhone," John Martin, CEO of Crowd Science, said in a statement. "Rather, BlackBerry as a brand just isn't garnering the loyalty seen with other mobile operating systems."

About 90 percent of current iPhone and Android users plan to stick with their current platform for their next phone upgrade.

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O2 announces new Apple iPhone tariffs

O2, Apple’s original mobile partner in the UK, is to overhaul its iPhone tariffs.

Mobile News reports O2 will launch a two-year Apple iPhone tariff for £25 per month. The tariff will include 100 minutes and unlimited texts.

According to Mobile News, Apple’s smartphone is also expected to be made available with O2’s Simplicity SIM-only tariffs for the first time, with the iPhone available at full price.

Free ‘unlimited’ bolt-on deals, available to high-value customers, will controversially be dropped, which may put O2 at a disadvantage with rivals Orange and Vodafone.

The Website notes O2 has also removed inclusive picture messaging as part of its text bundles, as well as international texting. The company will now charge customers 10p per minute to call their voicemail if outside of their minute bundle.

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MobileIron announces Managed Service Provider for Smartphone DM

As you may have heard, Enterprise Mobile announced the availability of a Hosted Device Management solution for iPhone and other mobile platforms.

It is powered by technology from MobileIron, a partner that we have been working with very closely for a while now. I am personally excited about this for several reasons:

* Hosted DM is faster to implement – no design reviews, no security committees for our customers to deal with.
* It can be scaled up and down very quickly – if you are hiring 1333 merchandisers for a holiday season, no problem – you only get charged for the 2 months they are employed.
* No ramp up for a company’s IT staff is required.
* Coupled with our other services, it enables a full mobile deployment instantly.

I could go on to say why this is sexy. I could call it cloud computing, SaaS, the ASP model, hosting, outsourcing or any of the other labels that trendy now. The descriptors aren’t as important as the capabilities that hosted device management provides. Of course, we all know that beyond the benefits I mentioned there are challenges with a hosted model that should be considered. User/authentication can be more complex as the identity of users either has to be replicated or re-created with the hosting provider, and some services may be limited in terms of integrating into an existing on-premise infrastructure.

However, I do believe that when you combine our services and capabilities you get more benefits than pitfalls with the hosted model. Of course, if you don’t share that view, you can take advantage of the installation and services on premise. That way you can enjoy looking at the silver appliance in your data center and Enterprise Mobile takes care of all the support, ongoing management, provisioning or even end user support for you. Give us a call…

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More than 130 million Enterprise Users in the Mobile Cloud by 2014, Juniper Report finds

Juniper research, a Media Partner of the Cloud Computing Congress, reports on new mobile cloud computing findings.

As collaborative applications become ever more important for enterprise, a new report from Juniper Research has found that the number of enterprise customers using mobile cloud-based applications will rise to more than 130 million by 2014, facilitated by platform as a service (PaaS) deployments from key players such as Google and Microsoft.

The report found that the market for connected enterprise apps had benefitted from the success of Apple's iPhone and App Store. It said that this was reflected both by a marked increase in both the number of enterprise apps available to end-users and also in the fact that such apps were themselves becoming far more attractive given the wide-ranging enhancements to smartphone user interfaces in the wake of the iPhone launch.

Furthermore, Juniper's Mobile Cloud Applications research found that as cloud providers were increasingly opening up their APIs for application providers seeking to develop browser-based or thin client applications, this provided greater opportunity and incentive for developers seeking to reduce the costs associated by porting apps across multiple platforms.

According to report author Dr Windsor Holden, "A cloud-based ecosystem for enterprise apps will be attractive both for developers and enterprises alike. For developers, cloud opens up a far wider potential audience for their products; for enterprise customers, outsourcing application management to a remote third-party, costed on a scalable, pay-per-use basis, offers far more flexibility combined with a significant reduction in capital expenditure."

Other findings from the Mobile Cloud Applications report include:

•         A cloud-based ecosystem offers storage and infrastructure suppliers the opportunity to enter the mobile arena by leverage their strengths in these areas to develop mobile-oriented cloud services

•         While enterprise applications will comprise the majority of cloud-based application revenues over the next five years, consumer applications including games, social networks and music services will together generate more than 25% of such revenues by 2014.

Juniper Research assesses the current and future status of mobile cloud based on interviews, case studies and analysis from representatives of some of the leading organisations in this bleeding edge industry.

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Forget the "Crackberry": Stanford students are addicted to their iPhones

Years ago, when the Blackberry started gaining traction among business users, people found themselves using the device so much that the nickname "Crackberry" was invented to describe how addicting the device was. According to a recent survey of 200 Stanford University students, the iPhone is just as addictive as the Blackberry, if not more so. Nearly a third of Stanford students surveyed worried about becoming addicted to their iPhones, while more than a third had heard complaints they were using the devices too much.

The survey gives some insight into why students found their iPhones so addicting: 74 percent of students surveyed said they 'felt cool" when they got an iPhone, but more importantly, a quarter of surveyed students said their iPhones felt like "an extension of their brain or their being."

I can definitely vouch for the addictive nature of the iPhone. I use my iPhone for almost everything these days, and it's fundamentally changed the way I do a lot of things. When I'm out and about and have a question about some bit of trivia, Wikipedia is only a few taps away. When I'm comparison shopping in a store, Amazon's product reviews can tell me in a few seconds whether what I'm looking at is a worthwhile purchase. And I've definitely gotten complaints that I use my iPhone too much from both my wife and a couple of my friends.

Funnily enough, though, the friend who was most apt to complain about my iPhone usage stopped complaining about it altogether once she got an iPhone of her own -- within a few days of using her iPhone, she admitted that she finally understood why I used mine so much.

How about you? Do you find the iPhone as addicting as the Stanford students? Let us know in the poll below or in the comments.

[Via Ars Technica]

Report: iPhone is number three smartphone platform worldwide

A new Gartner report puts the iPhone at number three on the list of smartphone platforms in use worldwide, right behind Nokia's Symbian OS and the RIM software used in Blackberry devices. More importantly, the report has Apple's device gaining market share -- its unit share has more than doubled in the last year, from 11.4 million units in 2008 to more than 24 million in 2009.

Android is also on the list, and while it's not quite competing with iPhone yet, that brand experienced even greater growth, from less than a million phones in 2008 up to almost 7 million in 2009. And perhaps the most interesting takeaway is that while Symbian experienced a nearly 10% drop in market share, both its and RIM's totals actually rose. While cellphone sales at large are down, smartphone sales are up across the board. I don't know how much you can thank Apple for this, but clearly more people are doing more things with their cell phones than just the usual calling.

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iPhone, Android and RIM are the real winners in the Smartphone war

Gartner just released its annual numbers for worldwide mobile phone sales to end users in the year known as two thousand nine.

Looking at smartphone OS market share alone, Gartner shows the iPhone OS, Android, and RIM making the biggest gains (up 6.2, 3.4, and 3.3 percentage points from 2008, respectively) at the expense of Windows Mobile (off 3.1 percentage points) and Symbian (off 5.5 points). Although Gartner says that Symbian "has become uncompetitive in recent years," (ouch) it concedes that market share is still strong especially for Nokia; something backed up by Nokia's Q4 financials and reported quarterly smartphone growth by 5 percentage points.

Regarding total handsets of all classifications sold, Nokia continues to dominate with 36.4% of all sales to end users (down from 38.6% in 2008) while Samsung and LG continue to climb at the expense of Motorola (dropping from 7.6% to 4.5% of worldwide sales in 2009) and Sony Ericsson. See that table after the break or hit up the source for the full report.

If you are looking to manage a mixed estate of Smartphones, check our MobileIron, next generation Smartphone Device Management from Cloud Distribution.

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