Interview: Jeff Bradley, SVP, AT&T: Enterprise Not An iPhone-BlackBerry War

Most of the iPhone hype is concentrated around the consumer opportunity?how many ravenous fans will line up on July 11 to purchase the new iPhone 3G?but a potentially larger opportunity for Apple ( NSDQ: AAPL) and its partners may lie in the enterprise with companies quick to snap up phones with full browsers that can connect into their corporate intranet, or, for instance, can be used by a pharmaceutical salesperson to show video presentations from the palm of their hand. At $199, an iPhone sounds affordable, but for free?because your company is paying for it?all the better. I interviewed Jeff Bradley, AT&T's ( NYSE: T) SVP of business mobility marketing to talk about how the iPhone will be used for business. Some excerpts:

Did you start working with Apple after it announced that it would be targeting the enterprise with Microsoft's ( NSDQ: MSFT) ActiveSync and other features?No, it's been since two or three months since the original launch. We started to talk to them on a number of dimensions on what we would like the enterprise capabilities to be, so when the opportunity arose, like it has now, it would provide some of the best experiences. We certainly shared our best thinking about the requirements for such a product. I don't know if you know, but we have an industry-leading position in BlackBerry, and sell more every day, month and year than anyone else, and likewise with Windows Mobile, so we have a broad knowledge and have a set of experiences on what larger and small enterprises need. That's not Apple's background, as you know, so that's not where they had a lot of experience, and they were open to listening to us."

More excerpts from the interview after the jump?

Can you compare the Apple iPhone as an enterprise device to what's already out there?"The first thing is, is that it's obviously new and not even out yet and some of the proof to see how it will work in the enterprise. You won't know until you find out. But in general, it's certainly met the minimum requirements from email, PIM and the security standpoint. I don't think that's going to be what holds it back. The ActiveSync, the VPN and the minimum administrative rights is going to be good enough. It had to achieve that because IT shops don't like to have to do all that. But where it distinguishes itself is in the browser and the big vivid screen. You can now VPN into an intranet site, and you can access your corporate information?that's game changing. Because that's happening without adaptation. That's where we expect the 'ah-ha' to occur. If it was about email, that's more of a slugfest."

So essentially, people will just be able to open the browser, type in a URL, and be able to access data on an Intranet?"You make it sound a lot more simple than it really is, but now, in general, you have a much better chance of it on the iPhone than you have had with any mobile device that came before it. If you've had a chance to use one for yourself, and have browsed into a consumer application or a Web site, you have noticed the way it renders."

What are the kinds of companies that are getting excited about the iPhone?"Within the bounds of confidentiality, I can tell you at a high level that we are seeing the interested companies as the ones that have any type of video or multimedia requirement from their workforce, such as training applications, or you want to show a customer a video or image. Or if your mobile workforce captures video, such as insurance or real estate. It's interesting in the pharmaceutical world?they need to show videos to doctors about the medicines they are able to offer them. Anything with a multimedia component to it. I think that we are going to see light bulbs going off with CIOs all around the country when they see what's possible. Just the ability to have push email in a secure manner and to be able to browse into the Intranet, that's a big breakthrough. And then, with the power of the SDK, that form factor is incredibly powerful?to write applications that are a lot less constrained."

How does an enterprise sale work? Will a company place an order for a couple hundred?"No, not likely. If they've been participating in the beta program, then they've run it through an internal certification process. Any company has a process before they bring in new technology. They test it to make sure it will support their security standards and all those kinds of things. They'll bring it in to the degree to which it works as advertised and they get positive feedback. Then the adoption will grow. We've seen that over the last six years with Blackberry. It was first brought in to the executives, and then to the hardcore mobile information workers, who had an obvious need to stay in touch. Because the benefit was so obvious, all the sudden the thing exploded, and the IT staff became comfortable with the ability to mange it as a platform. What you want the IT group to say is 'I'm comfortable, and it meets my standards. I have the skills and tools to use it as a platform. I'm comfortable with the first 50 becoming 5,000.' We'll see if that's the classic adoption of the iPhone The early feedback is extremely positive."

The media has done a good job of making this a war between the iPhone and the BlackBerry. Do you see that?"It's not a war, but I think they'll make each other better. That's one of the things that's exciting about what the iPhone has done. It's raised the bar on the display and user experience. It's accelerated the user experience on platforms by two to three years. It forced other folks in the ecosystem and Windows Mobile OEMs on how they present their service. It was a disruptive impact. The number of mobile email users is a small percentage of total emailers in the enterprise, so there's a lot of room for growth. You'll see BlackBerry continue to evolve with a loyal following, and they'll improve and offer things differently. Overall they will get better, and I think we are nowhere near a saturation point of mobile email. It's even more true with small business, where it's trailed mobile enterprise for email."

In your experience, what's a business' opinion on buying a device like the iPhone, which has 16 Gigs, or even storage for your entire music library, for an enterprise device? It seems like it's too consumer friendly...:"If you ever thought of how you do training of the workforce, they can download marketing or training videos, so there is a business application that involves a significant amount of storage, other than movie or iTunes. This whole convergence thing is really real. There's tremendous growth on consumer side of business with adoption of smart devices. A disproportionate amount of growth in the smartphone segment is coming from consumer channels. It may be the spouse of someone who had a BlackBerry, or the youth segment. It's segmentation expansion, a hardcore mobile pro isn't the only one buying a smartphone. It's not always about asking when does my personal and professional life work begin and end? At the same time, one of the benefits of putting a BlackBerry on the hip of one of your workers is that they are checking email on Saturdays and at night. If they are going to do that, then you can support both sides of the life. No more is that true than in small business. The iPhone has unique appeal that allows your work-and-personal life to blend constantly. We've see strong demand from small business because of that."

Is the price the same?:The device is the same price no matter if you are a consumer or business user, but there's two different data rate plans. For personal use, it's $30 dollars a month, and for enterprise, it's $45 a month.

What about the enterprise applications? During Apple's events, they had presentations from imaging-hospital software providers, and others?"The very first one was from salesforce.com, who showed what they could do. If there's going to be a war, and if one emerges, that SDK has the potential to be a big advantage for the iPhone....We haven't begun to see the potential, and it will just be like the browsing into the intranet site. That's going to be another capability that distinguishes the iPhone."

The No. 1 complaint about the iPhone that I hear from enterprise users is that there is no keyboard. Do you hear that?"Yes, but I've had the pleasure of doing this for awhile, and it takes all kinds. Some people love T9, and some people like SureType on the Blackberry, and then there's the full Qwerty's on the Treo vs. the BlackJack. It's remarkable that certain people like a certain style of keyboard. I think, initially, the virtual soft keyboard is different when it's not used very much, but in my experience in using one, you can become very proficient if you trust it. You can't micromanage the process. You have to let the software guess what word you meant, and then go back and do cleanup. You can be very proficient writing long emails, but it takes some time. I think there will be some people who always like the BlackBerry keyboard, and others who will get more comfortable with the soft keys and that will override the physical need for a keyboard. With RIM ( NSDQ: RIMM) we announced that we'll be offering the Bold?AT&T will have the exclusive rights to that, as well as iPhone 3G. I'm thrilled from that we'll have the two most exciting devices that will enter in the second half of the year. Competition is a great thing, and RIM and Apple are really good companies that are focused on what they do, and they are going to make each other better, and give our customers the absolute best.

Will you unlock the iPhone for international business travelers?No, we won't be doing that, but we do offer some attractive International plans for voice and data. We've done that on the BlackBerry for a long time, and also the same thing for Windows Mobile devices. We have 200 countries where you can make voice calls and 145 where there's data connectivity?and, of those, 60 are 3G. That also now includes Japan and South Korea.

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