iPhone for business? Hang on...

The launch of Apple's iPhone in the UK appears to have been as slick as the device itself but for businesses looking to adopt the device the road to smart phone heaven is much less smooth.

O2 is not currently offering business tariffs for the iPhone. An O2 spokeswoman told silicon.com its "initial focus has been on getting the experience right for consumer customers", adding: "It is our intention to offer the iPhone to business customers in the future."

She said business customers can still buy an iPhone but must take out a new 18-month consumer contract to do so.

Speaking to silicon.com sister site ZDNet.co.uk last week, O2's iPhone director Steve Alder conceded the consumer-only tariff is likely to make it more difficult for businesses to adopt iPhones.

Alder said: "We do want to keep it clear that this is a consumer launch on a consumer tariff. Our advice is: if you're in business, it's probably best to check the policy within your company, because it may not be possible to transfer your number from your business contract to the iPhone."

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And an O2 spokeswoman told silicon.com: "currently, it is not possible to transfer your existing business tariff mobile number to an iPhone tariff".

She added it's also not possible to use a business SIM in an iPhone, and support services for enterprise users willing to buy on consumer tariffs would come via O2's dedicated iPhone unit, rather than from an O2 Business or Corporate Customer Services contact.

Chris St Cartmail, managing director of online business info provider Business Data International, was one business user who wanted to get hold of the iPhone for his staff.

But he said the option of buying iPhones individually on consumer tariffs is not ideal as staff would have to re-bill the company. "That is obviously an administrative overhead," he explained. "We also miss out on not being able to reclaim the phone bills as tax expense and also we're not able to reclaim any VAT obviously if it comes re-billed from individuals."

The lure of the device as an enterprise tool is down to its features and functionality, he said - especially the web browsing experience it offers - but there would also be "synchronisation benefits" to having iPhones instead of other mobiles as his company predominantly uses Macs.

St Cartmail said: "The iPhone seems to have the best browser available - features like having multiple windows open. The whole web browsing experience is much better and would allow us to be able to monitor our own internal systems via the web. We'd be able to write widgets and so forth because it supports Java script and that kind of thing which is pretty handy.

"There are other phone benefits - it's got a nifty call merging function - you can press a button and have a couple of active calls at once so you've got instant conference calling. I don't know whether these things are available on other phones - but not all together."

But nifty features or not, for now analysts agree the iPhone is firmly on consumer soil.

Carolina Milanesi, research director at Gartner, told silicon.com: "We have stated before the US launch that as it stands we do not consider this as an enterprise class device. It's mainly a consumer device and it makes sense that at the moment O2 is dealing with it as a consumer device, rather than a business device."

She added: "I don't know how many employers would want their employees to go round with a device that is more about entertainment than productivity as it stands."

Amit Nagpal, principal consultant at Analysys Consulting, also sees the iPhone as consumer focused but does see potential in its web browsing features. "I don't see many IT managers being keen to spend money on the iPhone so their staff can listen to their MP3 collection. Having said this, there are some features of the iPhone, for example the user-friendly web browsing capability, that will make their way into business phones," he said.

And Windsor Holden, principal analyst at Juniper Research, is also "sceptical" about the idea of the iPhone as a business handset - not least because while its touch-keyboard might be good for one-click consumer apps it does not lend itself to the kind of continuous tapping required by business users in the way a BlackBerry-style Qwerty keyboard does.

Holden added: "Is it going to allow any third-party applications? If it's not then it's not much good for business purposes. If it doesn't do that Apple doesn't rule the world in terms of business applications and unless it supports a wide variety of different third-party applications then it really isn't much good."

But although it's still early days for the iPhone, third-party developers are already working to tap up its potential - and to increase its usefulness to businesses.

Last week, for instance, a plug-in was launched by open source mobile services project Funambol that allows users to synchronise with Outlook and other email programs, such as Google Mail and Yahoo! Mail. Meanwhile, mobile device management company Synchronica is touting an iPhone push email service for Microsoft Exchange accounts that enables users of the phone to get their corporate email without installing additional software on their iPhones.

So while BlackBerry-maker RIM won't be losing sleep just yet, it would be foolish to think the iPhone won't have an effect on its marketplace - not least as customers demand more of their hardware.

And, as Gartner's Milanesi said, just because businesses can't currently port their mobiles over en masse "doesn't mean you won't have people trying to get [iPhones] through the back door".

She added: "We are saying to enterprises to keep an eye open and make sure that they are following what Apple is going to do as far as security and so forth and applications and different email supports going forward. And we do expect in time Apple will look at this space as well but at the moment this is a consumer device."

O2 said 'tens of thousands' of iPhones were sold over the launch weekend.

ZDNet.co.uk's David Meyer contributed to this report