iPhone Gains in Enterprises, but Facebook is Bad for Undergrads

Signs of the times: Apple's iPhone is gaining traction in enterprises, and getting too deep into Facebook hurts college students' grades.

When Apple launched its iPhone many in the corporate and enterprise community (including a large software company in Redmond) dismissed it as a mere toy, but it looks like times are changing. According to market research outfit Forrester, the iPhone is gaining traction in the enterprise market, with executives from companies like Oracle, Amylin, and Kraft Foods all getting behind Apple’s device.

Although the organizations did express issues with getting iPhones talking to Exchange 2003 and Exchange 2007 enterprise messaging systems, they also praised the iPhone’s ease of use and simplicity of integrating it into their systems. Oracle said it had about 4,000 employees using iPhones, and Kraft indicated almost half it its mobile users are on iPhones. Amylin said it saw significant savings in its voice and data plans from using the iPhone.

Forrester found the enterprises would also like improves support for remote management of iPhones and better VPN support; these items (along with improved Exchange support) should be coming in Apple’s forthcoming iPhone 3.0 software.

On the flip side, sometimes too much technology can be a bad thing: a study at Ohio State University found that while eight out of ten respondents said their use of Facebook wasn’t interfering with their studies, Facebook users nonetheless got lower grades than students who don’t use Facebook at all. Although the study was only a first step—surveying 219 students at Ohio State—it found significant gaps in the amount of time Facebook users spent studying compared to non-Facebook users, and significant differences in their GPAs. The study also found undergrads were more likely to be on Facebook than graduate students.