Bank of America, Citigroup Said to Test Apple IPhone
Steve Jobs may soon bag a pair of the biggest U.S. banks as iPhone supporters. — Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup Inc. are considering whether to let employees use the Apple Inc. phone as an alternative to Research …
Context & Ripple Effects
The iPhone's march into the enterprise has been building since analysts flagged it: Gartner predicted an enterprise iPhone back in September 2007 ("Expect an enterprise iPhone"), and I.B.M. gave the argument substance in 2008 when it put the phone into position against its own Lotus/BlackBerry stack (I.B.M.'s Lotus integration). What is new with this Bloomberg report is the calibre of the adopters — per sources cited by the report, Bank of America and Citigroup are considering iPhone tests as alternatives to Research In Motion's BlackBerry, though both considerations remain unconfirmed.
First-order effects
- If the reported tests proceed, Research In Motion loses ground in the one segment — large-bank corporate fleets — where its security reputation has kept the BlackBerry the default, while Apple gains reference customers among the largest U.S. banks.
Second-order effects
- Bank IT departments built around BlackBerry management tooling would need multi-device security and email support, and peer banks facing the same employee demand would come under pressure to run similar trials rather than hold a single-vendor line.
Third-order effects
- A pattern of big-bank iPhone adoption would mark the shift in corporate mobile procurement from IT-mandated standardization on one vendor toward employee-driven device choice — an erosion of RIM's enterprise lock-in that no single bank's decision alone causes.
The trend: Enterprise mobility is moving from BlackBerry-standardized corporate fleets toward employee-chosen smartphones, with financial firms' security requirements setting the pace of that shift.