IBM Bringing Lotus Notes To iPhone?

Posted by: Arik Hesseldahl on January 21

The iPhone’s biggest weakness is its lack of support for enterprise email platforms like Microsoft’s Exchange and IBM’s Lotus Notes. It looks like that’s changing. Reports are circulating that IBM is close to announcing a version of Notes for the iPhone, and based on what I’m hearing that is pretty close to the mark, though an announcement may not come this week, as has been reported elsewhere.

The main importance is that iPhone owners who want to access their corporate email from the device will be able to do it with the full support of their corporate IT departments, which to now have been skittish about supporting the iPhone for a variety of reasons, most of which can be traced nothing more than uncertainty, and/or simply not wanting to support another wireless device.

InformationWeek reported that a version of Lotus for the iPhone would be announced at the Lotusphere conference in Orlando this week. No formal announcement has yet come from IBM, and the conference is underway. I’m told by someone familiar with the situation that there likely won’t be an announcement. More likely the news will come when Apple formally takes the wraps off the iPhone software development kit next month.

It’s pretty clear however that IBM is working more closely with Apple, and it would make perfect sense that the iPhone would be central to that effort. IBM-Lotus works closely with Research In Motion, and the iPhone, as Steve Jobs revealed last week, is second in popularity in the U.S. to the Blackberry, so IBM would be nuts not to to embrace the iPhone.

Meanwhile, Endgadet notes that AT&T has released an iPhone rate plan for business customers: $45 to $65 a month for unlimited data, visual voicemail with limits that vary on text messages (200 messages on the low end, unlimited texts on the more expensive plan.) Looks like corporations will soon have all they need to deal with requests for support from iPhone owners.

The next important move will be on Exchange. Yes you can access mail on Exchange servers when IMAP is enabled, but in my experience, it rarely is enabled. Direct Exchange support will go a long way toward making the iPhone a viable corporate device.