iPhone 2.0: BlackBerry juiced?

Apple Computer's next-generation iPhone goes on sale across the world this week at a range of lower prices. 

Apple is aiming at the corporate user, no doubt hoping to displace the corporate standard, RIM’s BlackBerry.  The iPhone will allow, for the first time, push e-mail -- whereby new e-mail is instantly transferred to the smartphone -- calendar and contact updating via the Microsoft Exchange application used by most large businesses, and a slate of new applications, games, navigation features and educational programmes purpose-written for the iPhone. As the handset will run on third-generation wireless networks, it should handle e-mail and Web sites twice as fast as the old model.

Mike Schaffner, writing for Forbes, is sceptical the iPhone will be a BlackBerry killer. He argues that Apple’s device is primarily a music player and phone that can now also do e-mail, whereas BlackBerry manufacturer RIM has from the start focused on providing business users with an e-mail device that also works as a phone. A subtle difference, yet Apple’s hoards of apologists think Schaffner misses the point: “the iPhone is neither principally a music player nor a phone; it is a handheld computer with internet capability that can also play music and make phone calls,” writes one.