Apple's iPhone Might Make Nice With Microsoft Exchange

Apple may be taking steps to make its omnipresent (at least in the news) iPhone more appealing to business users, if not to the VARs who love them.

As reported in The AppleInsider, the Cupertino, Calif.-based company is hiring an iPhone Windows Outlook/Exchange QA Engineer.

Apple's job posting reads: "The iPhone Quality team is looking for a motivated, highly-technical Exchange test/sync engineer with excellent problem solving and communication skills. You will join a dynamic team responsible for qualifying the latest iPhone products. Your focus will be testing Exchange and Outlook functionality with Apple's innovative new phone. The successful candidate will complete both documented and adhoc testing to ensure high quality releases."

Does this mean that in time the iPhone will be filling the pockets of long-time Blackberry toting executives like Ingram Micro's CEO Greg Spierkel and Tech Data's Bob Dutkowsky, both of whom have admitted to admiring the sleek communications device but said they wouldn't be making the switch because they needed their e-mail and global functionality?

Apple job-seekers interested in the position need an "ability to investigate and debug difficult problems on Windows," which seems like evidence that Apple is indeed looking to overcome business would-be users' main complaint about the iPhone. For now, the iPhone has limited Exchange support.

According to AppleInsider, "Though speculative, Apple's reference to sync engineers may indicate that work is being done to deliver support for ActiveSync, which would allow the iPhone to synchronize email, calendar items and contacts with Exchange servers."

Would greater Exchange compatibility affect your decision to use an iPhone instead of a Blackberry or other device for work?

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