It's only the first round, and it appears that my bruised face is already hugging the mat.
Not long ago, fellow Fool Tim Beyers and I squared off over the chances that the Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) iPhone would overtake the enterprise space. I pooh-poohed the idea that IT departments deep within corporate hallways would toss their Research In Motion (Nasdaq: RIMM) BlackBerrys and associated servers. Tim countered that it was not a matter of if, but when.
Then earlier this week, Brenton Hush, the CIO for HSBC's (NYSE: HBC) Australia and New Zealand division, said his company is thinking about ditching the RIM BlackBerry for the iPhone 3G. Now, the company is still evaluating the device and had not yet made a decision. But if the megabank were to switch, the deployment would conservatively amount to 200,000 devices.
Wow. That's no small purchase order. And I agree that if HSBC were to follow through with the iDeployment, it would certainly encourage other corporations to follow suit.
But maybe I'm a sucker for punishment when I say that I'm still holding my line on the iPhone's chances in the enterprise space today. To put it bluntly, I will be absolutely shocked if HSBC follows through and dumps the BlackBerry corporatewide in one fell swoop this year. It just doesn't make sense.
Consider that HSBC employees will have a much more limited choice of carriers on the iPhone platform. U.S. employees will have no choice but to go with AT&T (NYSE: T) -- no Verizon (NYSE: VZ) or Sprint Nextel (NYSE: S) options. Those in France will have to hop on France Telecom's Orange network. And what about employees in China or Korea? Sorry. Carriers such as China Mobile (NYSE: CHL) or SK Telecom are still devoid of any deal to support an iPhone (outside of hacked phones in China).
What's more, the current limited coverage is in addition to security concerns many companies have raised about the Apple platform. And the iPhone's less-than-optimal text-entry capability. And its lack of a scaled support and service structure.
One thing is true, though: The notion that HSBC may go with Apple puts margin pressure on RIM. If RIM believes that its deployments are truly in jeopardy, then rate cuts or other incentives will probably flow freely, and playing suppliers against each other may really be HSBC's prime motive.
So I may appear shaky in the knees with my enterprise prediction, but I'll still hold that many things need to change about the iPhone platform before corporations adopt the platform en masse.
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