Apple: iPhone adoption in the enterprise to climb

In its quarterly investor report, Apple executives said that 5.2 million iPhones were sold in the quarter, a year-over-year unit growth of 626 percent thanks to the release of the iPhone 3G S. The new iPhone is currently constrained worldwide, and managers couldn't say when the supply problem would ease. In addition, the supply issue could slow upcoming introductions in some world markets by a number of week, executives said.

Just as interesting were the statements about acceptance of enterprise and government market customers for the iPhone. In Tuesday's analyst conference call, Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer said the company saw great opportunity in these markets.

According to Oppenheimer, some 20 percent of Fortune 100 companies had placed orders of 10,000 units or more. And some governmental agencies had made orders up to 25,000 units.

The security and encryption features of iPhone OS 3.0 is the difference, he said.

Check Out: Bits from Apple's iPhone deployment guide for the enterprise

This is very positive news for customers that have traditionally been hostile to Apple products. Certainly, Apple's moves towards Windows integration in the iPhone and in the coming Snow Leopard version of the Mac OS will continue to warm up the usually chilly reception in enterprise IT departments.