Why should they care? It has nothing to do with Exchange which has been working very well.
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Banking Firm HSBC Considering iPhone? More iPhone Sales Estimates
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Why should they care? It has nothing to do with Exchange which has been working very well.
Damn. That means we'll have to find a nickname for the iPhone that's as good as Crackberry
iPium? iPhetamine? Someone help me out here...
I refer to them as BlechBerry, not CrackBerry.
sometimes people don't notice what I've said, probably thinking I just booted the pronunciation.Most of our group uses BlackBerry, and they really like them. I think it comes down to what you want out of it. If you really just want access to your corporate email, the BlackBerry is a great device.
If you want access to the web too, then the iPhone might be the way to go. If I'm a salesman sitting in traffic or cooling my heels waiting at a client's office, I'd much rather do web prospecting or fact-gathering on an iPhone as opposed to using a BB.
Cheapest, certainly. But a custom messaging solution would be more secure, faster and more flexible than push email. If it's THAT important, I don't think they should be cutting corners, but different strokes...
I think it's unlikely that they'll go for the iPhone any time soon. Not because the iPhone isn't good enough, but because it's not proven enough. They're not going to spend 200,000 x unit cost of iPhone + (200,000 x monthly tariff per month) on a "maybe".
That said, letting the iPhone's competitors know that HSBC are shopping around doesn't do any harm..
Damn. That means we'll have to find a nickname for the iPhone that's as good as Crackberry
iPium? iPhetamine? Someone help me out here...
It's nick name was the "Jesus Phone" in the past. It was a major change to the industry. The most famous phone ever made.
I thought it was called that mockingly, as in people are acting like the thing's the second coming of Christ.
munsters' numbers are really weird, what he says about the methodology and what he reports as numbers do not add up. based on the info on the article less than 900,000 iphones sold through apple retail, or less than half what munster claims.
I'm going to guess more like 8 Million iPhones by the end of December. I don't think this is entirely an unreasonable number for Apple to hit considering Christmas, the very reasonable price, and all of the other countries it's going to be available in in the next few months.
Except
Except, Mobile Mail.app sucks donkey balls. Let us list features that BlackBerry has for e-mail that iPhone does NOT:
- Ability to mass-mark mail read or unread.
- Ability to view all inboxes for multiple accounts in an aggregated view
- Ability to to cut-and-paste to and from emails
- Ability to save draft messages
- Ability to create email filters on the phone.
- Ability to download and save attachments, then send those attachments to other recipients in new emails (non-forwarded)
- Ability to create and use email templates on the phone
- True push service via the BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS) not BES, which works with Gmail.
- Spellcheck (and no, word-complete while typing is not the same thing)
- Ability to move messages to different folders.
- Ability to save messages locally to the handheld (so they are not automatically removed beyond the inbox time window)
- 3DES encrypted send/receive of all email. All BlackBerry handhelds relay all incoming and outgoing mails via a 3DES encrypted connection to either the BIS or BES server for ultimate delivery.
- And more...
These feature differences between the BlackBerry email solution and the iPhone Mail is not minor in any way. Despite Jesus Jobs proclamation that the iPhone is the "best email experience on a mobile phone", the reality could not be further from the truth.
In fact, as far as Smartphones go... iPhone is among the WORST email experiences, from a features point of view. I mean, no copy and paste?
The iPhone is no Blackberry killer. Sorry. It's really not.
I'm an iPhone 3G user, who gave up the blackberry. And while nothing compares to the iPhone's mobile web browsing experience, I can say... as far as real enterprise communication functionality goes, the iPhone is an order of magnitude crappier. If HSBC scraps BlackBerry, I can predict many of their employees will go apesh*t over the loss of some or all of the aforementioned features.
Except, Mobile Mail.app sucks donkey balls. Let us list features that BlackBerry has for e-mail that iPhone does NOT:
- Ability to mass-mark mail read or unread.
- Ability to view all inboxes for multiple accounts in an aggregated view
- Ability to to cut-and-paste to and from emails
- Ability to save draft messages
- Ability to create email filters on the phone.
- Ability to download and save attachments, then send those attachments to other recipients in new emails (non-forwarded)
- Ability to create and use email templates on the phone
- True push service via the BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS) not BES, which works with Gmail.
- Spellcheck (and no, word-complete while typing is not the same thing)
- Ability to move messages to different folders.
- Ability to save messages locally to the handheld (so they are not automatically removed beyond the inbox time window)
- 3DES encrypted send/receive of all email. All BlackBerry handhelds relay all incoming and outgoing mails via a 3DES encrypted connection to either the BIS or BES server for ultimate delivery.
- And more...
These feature differences between the BlackBerry email solution and the iPhone Mail is not minor in any way. Despite Jesus Jobs proclamation that the iPhone is the "best email experience on a mobile phone", the reality could not be further from the truth.
In fact, as far as Smartphones go... iPhone is among the WORST email experiences, from a features point of view. I mean, no copy and paste?
The iPhone is no Blackberry killer. Sorry. It's really not.
I'm an iPhone 3G user, who gave up the blackberry. And while nothing compares to the iPhone's mobile web browsing experience, I can say... as far as real enterprise communication functionality goes, the iPhone is an order of magnitude crappier. If HSBC scraps BlackBerry, I can predict many of their employees will go apesh*t over the loss of some or all of the aforementioned features.
I work at HSBC in the UK.
They have just started rolling out and advertising internally 'project evergreen', which allows us to upgrade our current blackberry to any other blackberry of our choice.
We can choose from the curve, the pearl, and the new bold 9000 version.
Ive selected the Bold 9000 version, which should start rolling out late August.
Im sorry to disappoint the apple fanboys, but I cant see HSBC ditching their blackberry rollout and support services... here's another reason why...
On our blackberries we have a host of support applications which are required to work effectively (for security I cant state what they are). I doubt very much they even exist on the iphone platform, and my blackberry is useless to me without these extra applications.
For us, the blackberry is more than just email, as it integrates with so much other stuff at HSBC.
This story is just wishful thinking Im afraid.
They have just started rolling out and advertising internally 'project evergreen', which allows us to upgrade our current blackberry to any other blackberry of our choice.
We can choose from the curve, the pearl, and the new bold 9000 version.
Ive selected the Bold 9000 version, which should start rolling out late August.
Im sorry to disappoint the apple fanboys, but I cant see HSBC ditching their blackberry rollout and support services... here's another reason why...
On our blackberries we have a host of support applications which are required to work effectively (for security I cant state what they are). I doubt very much they even exist on the iphone platform, and my blackberry is useless to me without these extra applications.
For us, the blackberry is more than just email, as it integrates with so much other stuff at HSBC.
This story is just wishful thinking Im afraid.
I'm still not convinced, I'm afraid. Quite impressive washing it off, but not recommended! Five drops onto a pavement killed the 3G. This is quite predictable levels of drops over, say, a six month period in a city environment. The problem is the glass screen. It's never going to take the punishment that a plastic screen can withstand. And why would I want a case? My Blackberry doesn't have a case. Besides, if you roll out 200,000 iPhones each with a £10 case (or even £5 because you're a banking giant with a kickass procurement organisation) that's an additional £2M expenditure. Or £1M expenditure. Either way it's ****-loads of money, that I didn't have to spend when my staff had Blackberries. Any finance director worth his salt would bounce the req. I stand by my original reservations.
HSBC is a banking giant
What's with the inverted commas around "giant" in relation to HSBC.
Based on market cap HSBC is the largest bank in the world. There are other measures - but market cap is particularly apt given your other story today.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hsbc
Psst... Macrumours (yes - with a "u")... I'll let you in to a little secret... there's more to the world than the United States.
What's with the inverted commas around "giant" in relation to HSBC.
Based on market cap HSBC is the largest bank in the world. There are other measures - but market cap is particularly apt given your other story today.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hsbc
Psst... Macrumours (yes - with a "u")... I'll let you in to a little secret... there's more to the world than the United States.
Blackberry's have tempered glass screens too, actually. Just the body is plastic.
HSBC is indeed a very large corporation.
To that end, I was wondering why MacRumors felt they needed to put quotes around the word "giant" in the article? It's kind of rude given the context.
Just because a bank is relatively unknown in the USA doesn't mean it isn't one of the largest most important banks on the planet you know.
I completely agree. Many (but not all) people in the U.S. are, unfortunately, quite ignorant when it comes to international issues. According to Wikipedia, HSBC is "the world's largest company and the world's largest banking group, as calculated based on different metrics by the annual Forbes list of the world's largest firms published on April 2, 2008. In February 2008, HSBC was named the world's most valuable banking brand by The Banker magazine."
So, MacRumors, why must "giant" be put in quotation marks?? It's like calling Apple an "innovative" technology company.
That said, if such an adoption does happen, it would be very significant for Apple. Despite all the growth Apple has experienced in recent years, the top-tiers of the business world (investment banking, management consulting, etc.) is still firmly entrenched in Windows. For instance, a friend who I convinced to purchase a MacBook earlier this year (and loved it) recently started working at a large investment bank and told me she wants to switch back to Windows simply because "everyone at work uses it." If HSBC, the world's largest bank, were to begin adopting Apple products, it could set off a chain of events that would make Apple a powerful player in the enterprise market.
Of course they do, but either way, people won't look after them because they don't own them, and whatever anyone says, an exposed glass screen is more vulnerable than one that isn't. One of my staff threw his BB across a meeting room last week. Then he picked it up, dusted it off and apologised (it was a tough phone call - biiigggg outage - one for another day). If he'd done that with an iPhone we would've needed a dustpan and brush. Corporate tools are just that: tools, and they don't get treated with respect.
this is great news. HSBC is my bank so I'm pleased to see they're investing in Apple! I can see other businesses watching this and others following suit of all goes well. One wrong move though...
Hopefully apple will speed up updates of needed features (suck as copy and paste) when big business customers start requesting them.
Hopefully apple will speed up updates of needed features (suck as copy and paste) when big business customers start requesting them.
I work for HSBC and I would appreciate this alot!
And why is the word giant in parenthesis? HSBC is the largest bank in England, the largest in New York state, and according to Forbes the biggest COMPANY in the world (April, 2008).
Although, I must say that this doesn't make sense as HSBC is consistently very far behind technologically.
And why is the word giant in parenthesis? HSBC is the largest bank in England, the largest in New York state, and according to Forbes the biggest COMPANY in the world (April, 2008).
Although, I must say that this doesn't make sense as HSBC is consistently very far behind technologically.
The Blackberry is great for text. The keyboard on it makes it so. However, as far as 'general computing' goes, the iPhone kicks the Blackberry like the US kicked France in the Mens' 400m freestyle relay.
A lot of companies might consider the iPhone because it is so easy to program for. I think one thing that would take the iPhone to new lengths is Apple's allowance of hardware interfacing. Not only could you have a hardware game pad (like the iControl thing), you could also have bar-code scanners, credit card swipers, etc.
I can type much faster on my iPhone than on my Blackberry. Didn't think I would, but only after a week or so, I'm cooking. I think it's because you only have to touch the keys and not push them, if you see what I mean.
Availability to corporations
We've been trying to order 30+ 3G iPhones since the day they came out but our AT&T business rep (and every other one I talked to when i tried the run-around) says corporations are currently limited to a maximum of THREE iPhones.
I said if Coca-Cola or any major company wanted like 3,000 they would surely get them. He said no, he has large corps who want them but can't get them because of this policy. All the AT&T reps are ticked because they want the sales commissions. The three phone cap is AT&T policy based on perceived supply and corporate foot-dragging at this point.
We need our minutes pooled and all billed centrally, so we can't all buy individually and get re-imbursed.
Has any IT guy out there received more than three for his company? I can't imagine it's possible they're constraining supplies to all companies.
We've been trying to order 30+ 3G iPhones since the day they came out but our AT&T business rep (and every other one I talked to when i tried the run-around) says corporations are currently limited to a maximum of THREE iPhones.
I said if Coca-Cola or any major company wanted like 3,000 they would surely get them. He said no, he has large corps who want them but can't get them because of this policy. All the AT&T reps are ticked because they want the sales commissions. The three phone cap is AT&T policy based on perceived supply and corporate foot-dragging at this point.
We need our minutes pooled and all billed centrally, so we can't all buy individually and get re-imbursed.
Has any IT guy out there received more than three for his company? I can't imagine it's possible they're constraining supplies to all companies.
I really don't get the point of your last point. Asserting that a bunch of missing features will be easy to implement does not mitigate the fact they are missing. The fact that so many "simple" features are missing adds up to a big problem. And I've seen many enterprises have phones with multiple accounts set up on someones phone.
To lodge a defense of the iPhone's mail capability predicated on an assertion that the shortcomings will be eventually fixed is ridiculous. It's like me saying: look at this block of granite. Isn't it an amazing statue I have not yet carved? It beats all other statues, despite it's lack of existance.
I find writing a sms message very hard on iphone. I'm not text freak I like to call and talk but still sms is part of GSM consumption .
Replying emails should be high priority in business use of cell phones and I believe iPhone is not made for it.
I don't have big and fat fingers
Replying emails should be high priority in business use of cell phones and I believe iPhone is not made for it.
I don't have big and fat fingers
I agree. I also don't find my blackberry user friendly. I think it may be the 8700 I have which is a big brick. I still haven't figured out how to scroll curser right/left with the thumb wheel when I need to edit text. A perl or curve may be easier to use...