The latest controversy in the world of mobility is, Apple has suddenly decided to take off Google Voice from the iPhone App store. Although its name might suggest otherwise, Google Voice is not a web telephony software like Skype, it is more a liaisoning service which uses voice over internet protocol (VoIP) to link customers' phone numbers together, to a single number. Even earlier Apple had taken down Google's voice enabled applications citing the reason that they "duplicate features provided by iPhone".

In the current instance, more than a few people can see the invisible hand of AT&T at play in the background. Google Voice offers a number of features which clash with services ATnT provides - It allows users to send free SMS messages and get cheap long-distance over Google Voice’s lines. It also makes it trivial to switch to a new phone service, because everyone calls the Google Voice number anyway.

The tech community is currently pretty irked at Apple, or AT&T behind the scenes, trying to stifle innovation. 

Update -  Taking a cue from the enraged tech community, the govt has gotten involved. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has sent a letter to Apple, AT&T and Google asking, “why Apple rejected the Google Voice application for the iPhone and removed related “third-party applications” from its store.” Apple has some good explaining to do.

I came across a nice list of iPhone business apps on BusinessWeek, which I thought I would share for you. There are an endless number of iPhone apps out there, both business and consumer, serious and non serious. BusinessWeek lists out what it thinks are really useful apps for corporates, and I will add a few favourites of my own.

Citrix Receiver Lite  - This app gives users access to Microsoft (MSFT) Windows applications and documents via iPhones.

FedEx Mobile - This free app allows you to track your FedEx packages around the world right from your iPhone.

Recorder by Retronyms - This voice recorder makes up for iPhone not having an inbuilt voice recorder. 

Salesforce Mobile - This is the mobile version of SF's famous CRM software. 

And now for my personal favourite:-

HyperOffice - HyperOffice is a web app which lets you access and manage corporate mail, contacts, tasks, calendars and also documents from your iPhone. 

Did you think the debate about iPhone in the enterprises was over? Not by a far cry! After dismissing iPhone as an enterprise tool in 2008, Forrester Research have had a change of heart. A case of join em if you cant lick em eh? In a recent report by Forrester indicates that iPhone can be a hit with enterprises for delivering corporate content and collaboration applications. Yay for collaboration application providers for the iPhone!

Forrester conducted a survey of enterprises which highlighted the success of iPhone as a business tool. These were Kraft Foods, Oracle and a large pharma company (name disclosed). Almost half the mobile users in Kraft have adopted iPhones because of its business benefits and 4000 in Oracle. The benefits of the iPhone small businesses was never in doubt, but now enterprises seem to be going the same way. Seems like the big guys are learning lessons from the small guys. The same is on display with enterprises increasingly adopting SaaS collaboration applications originally intended for growing businesses.

Andrew Nusca from Znet recently listed out 10 lessons of iPhone adoption in the enterprise. These are:

1.) It’s more than just another mobile device as its internet power puts it at par with desktops for web based applications which are a rage in business today. 

2.) It gives employees freedom to choose their own tools

3.) It changes the support model to self-service as iPhone users tend to informal or formal build communities for helping each other with issues.

4.) It can save money as look at the data and voice plans sometimes reveals hidden savings. 

5.) It helps IT stay out of the device & mobile plan business as employees who buy their own iPhones get hardware and accessories along with it. According to Andrew "you have, in effect, outsourced responsibility for the device, network, and plan to others, while retaining control over device policies and management."

6.) It allows IT to use policy profiles to implement security requirements

7.) It allows IT to adopt self-provisioning for apps and configuration because the ability to access application tools through a url on iPhone gives  enterprises a scalable way to walk users through a self-provisioning and installation process. 

8.) iPhone and ActiveSync is a work in progress for calendaring. This is one of the negative lessons. Enterprises could avoid this pitfall by going for alternative mobile compatible messaging applications like HyperOffice.

9.) A lack of management tools and full support for VPNs may be a deal-breaker. This might be fixed in the next version.

10.) Early-generation tech butterflies make for a frustrating user experience as elementry functionality like cut and paste, landscape mode for email; click-to-call and Flash support are missed. 

Microsoft seems to be all set to jump on the Mobileme brigade, as a page recently went live on its site which describes a similar service titled MyPhone. The service was previously referred to as Skybox, and the site Getskybox.com redirects to a page on Microsoft's site. There has been no official word from Microsoft about the service yet.

This service seems to directly rival the MobileMe offering of Apple, in more ways than just the name. Going by the information provided on the site, it allows users to synchronize their mail, calendars, appointments, pictures and documents with the web. As "my" and the list of features suggests, it is a service targeted towards end users, it will not be of much interest to corporates. Although it has a slight overlap in functionality with its own offering ActiveSync, and mobile collaboration software Hyperoffice, the latter are more suited to businesses because they are designed to work in group and team environments, and allow sharing of information, and also allow the ability to synchronize with corporate messaging tools like Outlook. The restrictive 200 MB storage limit is another factor that makes it a purely end user tool.