The Apple iPhone is bad for businesses, and the current trend towards bring your own device (BYOD) policies being enacted around the country is troubling, according to a mobile pioneer.
The new policies allow employees to choose which devices they want to use on the job. In many cases, IT departments are supporting iOS, Android, Windows Phone, and Blackberry OS all at the same time.
Mobile industry pioneer and Sepharim Group founder Bob Egan is speaking out against the BYOD culture and the unnecessary complications and expenses it brings to many businesses.
Speaking to Chief Mobility Officer Egan explains:
“BYOD falls between two opposing needs: the freedom of the employee to use their devices for business and personal purposes without the fear of having their privacy invaded and the importance of an organization’s need to audit mobile data to further productivity and optimize their mobile work program. However, in this first wave of mobile ubiquity in the enterprise, we’re finding ourselves ruled by the will of the individual. Employees prefer to choose their own devices based on personal preference rather than the overall needs of the company — and much of this has been caused by the wild popularity of the iPhone.”
The creator of the IEEE 802.11 WLAN standard goes on to note:
“Mobile workforces have exploded with Apple devices; they’re cute, they have a lot of applications … While many companies are drawn in by the ‘eye-candy,’ others are still looking for more serious enterprise solutions — which isn’t Apple.”
Egan further reveals that Apple iOS devices are still lagging behind other OSes when it comes to gathering important data which is needed to design better mobile applications for businesses.
Egan concludes:
“While Apple devices make inputing information easy, getting information back is a lot harder especially when you begin to consider information audit trails and regulatory compliance matters.”
