We've noted before that Apple has yet to make a serious dent in the BlackBerry's dominance of the business smartphone market, but maybe things are starting to change. Some evidence: IBM is putting an important piece of its enterprise social software onto the iPhone platform. According to InformationWeek:

IBM is making its enterprise social software Lotus Connections and Lotus Quickr available for the Mac and iPhone. iPhone users can now access Quickr files using a native iPhone app created by IBM development partner SNAPPS. The company is also going to demonstrate its Lotus Sametime software for the Mac and iPhone. In addition, it plans to demonstrate Lotus Symphony 3.0, its free alternative to Microsoft Office, for the Mac. And it plans to offer guidance to software developers seeking to bring Domino business applications to Apple's mobile devices. The company claims that it is the first to support securely encrypted e-mail on the iPhone from the iTunes App Store. Its software also enables secure instant messaging with support for voice, video, and online meetings.

This is a major score for Apple, but before you recommend tossing all those BlackBerrys in your organization, go back and review this helpful production comparison from Earthweb. It pits the iPhone against the latest BlackBerry and Android models to determine which are best for business. With smartphone sales now accounting for 14 percent of the entire mobile market (and expected to pass PC sales by 2013), more and more IT people are becoming phone people whether they like it or not.

--Don Willmott