HSBC, a global banking company with roughly 300,000 employees worldwide, is evaluating the iPhone as the standard mobile device for its staff. HSBC's CIO for the Australia and New Zealand region, Brenton Hush, told ZDNet Australia that "it's definitely something we are considering from a HSBC Group perspective."

The company currently uses RIM's BlackBerry devices to keep staff connected to e-mail, calendar, and contacts. One of the biggest barriers to enterprise adoption of the iPhone was once the lack of Exchange support. Apple vastly improved the enterprise compatibility of iPhones by licensing Microsoft's ActiveSync technology to sync the device with Exchange servers. The company also added support for distributing and managing custom apps and remotely wiping a stolen or lost device. Hush thinks the changes make it a viable choice for HBSC's staff. "I think [the iPhone] would change some underlying infrastructure considerations from an enterprise perspective. But [Apple] have been pretty smart with the design," he said.

No timeline is in place for any kind of switch, and according to Hush, it's not a high-priority issue. But if HSBC did standardize on the iPhone 3G, it would be one of the largest single orders for Apple's mobile device and could be a significant cut in business for RIM. Surely there are some users that would just as soon have their BlackBerry and its QWERTY keyboard ripped from their cold, dead hands, but a large deployment like this—"conservatively, to 200,000 people," said Hush—could help legitimize the iPhone as an enterprise-ready device.