iPhone-Google Voice Issues Underscore iPhone for Business Issues

This week brings news that Apple rejected Google's application to make its Google Voice mobile application available for download via the iPhone application store. Google Voice users are instead stuck using Google's web portal to manage their voicemail accounts.

There are a lot of accusations as to who is to blame, but there's one important lesson for IT managers looking to incorporate iPhone into their mobile environments - so long as Apple users are restricted to applications available through the iPhone App store, you won't have the freedom to deploy whatever you want to your iPhone users. Organizations wishing to incorporate iPhone into their communication and collaboration architectures may find their choices limited to only what they can deliver through a mobile-web browser optimized web site.

It's worth paying attention to this spat, and it's also worth pressuring Apple to open up the iPhone so that users can install their own apps as they please. After all, if the iPhone is supposed to eventually replace the PC, shouldn't users have the freedom to install what they want, how they want, whenever they want?