It was 18 years ago today that Apple CEO Steve Jobs gave the world its first look at the iPhone during the Macworld conference in San Francisco. To say it’s been a success is an understatement.
“Smartphones, driven by the success of the iPhone, have literally changed the world– and we will be hard pressed to see another product that will have the same impact in our lifetime,” says Weldon Dodd, senior vice president of Global Partnerships for Kandji. “And as powerful of a force it has been with consumers, the iPhone’s impact on the business world has been even more profound. I still remember the days of ‘leaving work at the office’ not because I wanted to but because I had to – my workspace was plugged in! The iPhone changed all of that, enabling employees with the anywhere, anytime work environment many of us experience today. The iPhone’s ubiquity has changed the business game, becoming the mobile tool of choice.”
He adds that the advent of the App Store catapulted the iPhone, and iPad for that matter, into the business productivity stratosphere by allowing employees to truly do their jobs anywhere. Now untethered from the laptop, productivity apps like Zoom, Slack, and Google Docs, as well as apps that cater to specific industries like hospitality and retail – all are accessible via the App Store we download everyday on our smartphones.
“If not for the App Store I believe the iPhone would have remained primarily a consumer device versus the leading business productivity tool it is today,” Dodd says. “Apple’s superior hardware, simple to use interface, and powerful apps make it the leading enterprise productivity tool it is today.”
Weldon Dodd is the SVP of Global Partnerships at Kandji. He began his career running a campus Mac lab and NeXT lab at the University of California. Soon after, he then went to wireless telecom just as digital networks and the Internet came to mobile. The next stage was automating large Apple deployments and running the Apple Authorized Training Center in Colorado. Weldon joined Kandji in early 2020 where he has built and led several teams.
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