Is Apple banking on HSBC to solve the iPhone keyboard conundrum?

Davey Winder
Friday, 15 August 2008 14:34

Your IT - Mobility

Could one banking giant be about to shake up the mobile business by cracking a BlackBerry addiction and making the move to iPhone instead? It might just mean the end of the slide-out keyboard iPhone prototype as well...

Word is out that HSBC, one of the biggest banking groups on the planet, is considering moving away from the BlackBerry and into iPhone territory instead.

Although the revelation comes from inappropriately named Brenton Hush, who happens to be chief information officer for HSBC in Australia and New Zealand, the impact could be global.

Hush has loudly proclaimed that HSBC is looking at the iPhone from a global, group perspective rather than this just being a localised thing.
 
And that means a heck of a lot of iPhones could be on the order sheet. Anything from the 200,000 figure that Hush has quoted as a conservative potential deployment, right up to 300,000 which represents the actual number of international staff that HSBC employs.

This would be, as far as I am able to uncover, the biggest single iPhone order yet.

Or would it?

Not everyone is convinced. Take mobile industry veteran Guy Kewney, for example. Writing on his NewsWireless blog, Kewney raises two key points:

1. "Looking at isn't the same as placing an order and Hush will be looking at a lot more than just those two handsets."

2. "A quarter of a million users around the world isn't the same as in any one country; the decision, if taken, may not impress operators - especially those who don't have iPhone franchises. And in some countries, the choice of operator may come ahead of the choice of handset for many IT buyers."

Certainly as far as point 1 goes, you have to imagine given that HSBC has already invested heavily in BlackBerry, and that means back end investment at this kind of enterprise level as well as just handset stuff, it will be taking a long, hard look at the BlackBerry Bold.

So where does an Apple iPhone with a 'proper' keyboard come in, or go out, then? Read page 2 to find out...

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