The Business iPhone

Two of the new iPhone announcements that probably puzzled most people make sense when you put them together. The new iPhone 5s home button has a thumbprint detector built in. And, Apple is including free productivity apps. Apple did not mention the connection, but the thumbprint detector is squarely aimed at security managers, who may shortly decide that certain classes of sensitive data can’t be put on a mobile device at all unless it is protected by something like a thumbprint. As long as businesses will be considering the high-end iPhone for those situations, Apple might as well underscore their phone’s business savvy by including desktop-compatible spreadsheet, presentation, and word processing applications. It is still a tough sell to persuade business buyers that a phone could replace a locked briefcase, but Apple has at least positioned itself to try to make that case.