The iPhone goes corporate

Looks like it's almost time to quit all the moaning about how you can't use your iPhone at work: Corporate IT departments are taking up the iPhone in increasing numbers, and resistance is thawing considerably.

It was really only a matter of time. The iPhone has become such a phenomenon with users that IT departments are finally caving in to the pressure from their whiny employee base. The numbers already look pretty good for Apple: 2 million iPhones sold to business accounts by the end of 2009, giving it a 7 percent share of the corporate market (up from 2 percent last year).

The reasons for the grinding down of IT management are about what you'd expect, and Fortune lays them out pretty succinctly:

- Users love their iPhones, and sky-high satisfaction ratings have made the frequent IT department position of "let's wait and see if it breaks" irrelevant.

- Turns out you can type just as fast (or faster, ahem) on an iPhone's touchscreen than on a phone with a physical keyboard.

- Thousands of enterprise-focused apps are now available for the platform.

- The competition -- namely RIM and Windows Mobile -- is now "years behind Apple" in capability. Enterprises now actually ignore the iPhone at the risk of hampering their business's success.

So, good news for those iPhone fans out there who find they have to use one device for personal work and another, lesser device for business: Your day of convergence is probably nigh.