The tables turned at this year's CTIA IT & Entertainment show. After years of parading mobile content and entertainment players such as MTV Networks and Universal Music, the mobile enterprise was the star of the show--thanks mostly to CTIA's diligent work in building the enterprise side of the show. The consumerization of the enterprise--thanks in most part to the iPhone--mobile healthcare and machine-to-machine communications were hot topics at the show last week.

"You can't separate the enterprise from the consumer anymore," declared Jason Mackenzie, president of HTC America, during a session on smartphones. "IT is changing. The days of the IT department buying 5,000 phones are over. There are lots of individual buyers."

That trend has been a boon for Sybase, which has been scoring several mobile device management deals with players like Verizon and Samsung, which are looking to offer one-stop enterprise solutions. Willie Jow, vice president of mobility marketing product marketing with Sybase, credits the iPhone with finally getting consumers and hence those consumers in the enterprise thinking beyond just email on a mobile device. JD Powers and Associates recently announced that the iPhone is No. 1 in customer satisfaction among business users.

While there has always been that niche of devices that mobile-enabled computer apps like purchase orders, it hasn't been a widespread phenomenon in the enterprise. Of course, the enterprise is struggling with security and IT governance issues when it comes to individual liable devices now, but Jow sees a day in the not-so-distant future (2012 or so) when the mobile device will replace the laptop.

I suppose that is why the Windows Mobile platform may not lose its relevance, despite the barrage of criticism and the fact that the release of WinMo 6.5 was woefully overshadowed by Android operating system news at the show. I've been critical of it during the past several weeks. But even if the OS doesn't match up with the performance of Android, which everyone is gaga over, the fact that Windows applications are so entrenched in the enterprise probably won't render it obsolete. Motorola has dropped WinMo in favor of Android. Palm is putting its effort in WebOS. But Samsung, which announced a bigger push into the enterprise, is using WinMo as the cornerstone of its enterprise strategy. HTC's Mackenzie also indicated that the smartphone vendor is aligned behind two platforms: WinMo and Android.

It will be interesting to see whether the Android platform will follow the iPhone path. With the iPhone, corporate bigwigs have been bringing the device into the enterprise and asking their IT people to secure it. - Lynnette