How Big Will iPhone CRM Get?
These days, large companies can hardly expect to proliferate without mobile functionalities or applications to meet the demands of the growing population of iPhone, BlackBerry, and now Droid users. Considering enterprise, this increased development in mobile applications seems an obvious step, and especially obvious considering not only the BlackBerry’s positioning as an enterprise phone, but also the growing number of people using iPhones and Android phones for business.
So with that in mind, should we find it odd that there is little news regarding iPhone CRM applications, or mobile CRM in general? Yes, most CRM providers have created mobile apps, which for the most part offer limited functionalities but access to real-time information. The iPhone CRM apps get most of the attention—no doubt due to the iPhone’s current “it phone” status—but news of innovations to these applications is few and far between.
Surely some new iPhone CRM developments will be announced at this month’s Dreamforce convention, and others will follow on a regular (but infrequent) basis. But the mobile CRM space on the whole seems—and this makes sense—to focus more on using mobile e-commerce for CRM purposes than on adding bells and whistles to mobile CRM applications. It’s doubtful that mobile CRM applications will ever replace the desktop versions, but is this current lag in mobile and iPhone CRM development simply because the desktops allow greater functionality? Or is it also that mobile apps skew toward leisure rather than business, and therefore smart phones are considered personal devices over productivity tools?
[Photo courtesy of faridae.]
