It is exciting to see the Apple iPhone top the JD Power 2009 Wireless Consumer Smartphone Satisfaction Study
and beat out two formidable competitors in HTC and Research In Motion. Interestingly, RIM with its ever popular Blackberry device came second to last overall with middling ratings for such items as Design, Features and Ease of Operation.

From a business point of view it has never made much sense to me why companies would want to have to buy and support Blackberry Enterprise server software to connect their corporate Blackberry’s to the company Exchange server when you could use a very nice HTC phone coupled with Microsoft Windows Mobile and have it working out of the box in an instant.

I know that Blackberry’s had more features for the Enterprise in the early days like remote wiping of lost phones but Microsoft has added similar functionality in recent times. So I give RIM that advantage, but surprisingly both RIM’s Blackberry OS and Microsoft’s Windows Mobile OS both got 3 out of 5 this year in the Operating System category. I am definitely not in love with Windows Mobile after using it for a lot of years and am shocked to see then that in  the survey RIM and MS managed only the same rating.

Which brings me back to the iPhone. Never have I purchased such a hyped up device (and I have bought a few duffers in my time) and been so pleased with it and actually found it to be better than I hoped. I waited for the 3G iPhone, not so much for the 3G but because they licensed ActiveSync from Microsoft which allows the iPhone to natively talk to Exchange servers straight out of the box.

As a business tool, the Safari browser, the infinite ways to expand the usage with the iTunes App store and the piece de resistance the email integration with Exchange means this is just a fabulous combination that is truly useful for the individual and the business.

I thoroughly recommend you consider the iPhone when you are next evaluating smart phones for your business or are looking to upgrade. I don’t think you will be disappointed.