Apple: International Appeal Paying Off?

After gushing about how Apple's platform will support international business wanting to support a single installation image worldwide, I see the ginormous bank HSBC is looking to deploy iPhones worldwide. (Sorry, RIMM; those 330,000 employees might turn into lost revenue.)

HSBC's possible iPhone deployment would represent a much larger transition to Cocoa than the enterprise desktop migration at Axel Springer AG. HSBC would be able to deploy with one package every language its employees would require worldwide, without worry about either different versions or the capacity of the OS to support non-US characters. There is no "Japanese version" or "Chinese version" of OS X on the desktop or on the iPhone. There is one version, and user selection of language causes every launched app to use the selected localization. The same OS worldwide, and the same application worldwide -- and all in the same versions.

Large enterprises' interest in iPhone development is but a hair's breadth from development for other hardware Apple sells, running the same operating system. I wrote a bit ago how funny I found it that Apple's drive to get Unix back into enterprise might be achieved on the coattails of a mobile phone, and I think those who would short Apple (other than as a very short-term trade, say, around an announcement or event) should have their heads examined. Both the phone and the Unix seem to have a future, not only among existing technorati but in niches historically unavailable to Apple, and representing large-scale growth opportunities.