Four out of ten iPhones are purchased by business users according to Ron Spears, chief of AT&T’s Business Solutions unit.

This is in stark contrast to a statement made be Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in 2007. “Five hundred dollars? … That is the most expensive phone in the world. And it doesn’t appeal to business because it doesn’t have a keyboard.”

“When the iPhone came out, what most people heard in the first year from ‘07 to ‘08 was ‘oh my God, it’s not BlackBerry secure. This is not going to work on the enterprise space.’ At the end of the day, it’s just software. That’s all it is.” Spears said at a recent investor conference.

Spears also notes, “And by the time the 3G came out in ‘08 [Apple] had solved about 80 percent of the security issues. By the time the 3GS came out last summer, most CIOs will tell you today they have very few issues around the security that they need provided, as they have come to know that RIM can do it because of the way RIM provides their solution. So enterprises today view the iPhone as a mobile computer.”

Apple has succeeded in overcoming businesspersons early misgivings about the iPhone’s security and business-readiness. In last year’s third quarter, the iPhone scored highest in the consumer and business categories of JD Power’s Smartphone Satisfaction Study. The device scored 803 points out of a possible 1,000. That’s 79 points more than Research in Motion’s BlackBerry, which took second place with a score of 724 points, the industry average.

If you would like to implement an iPhone into your business technology plan, head over to Apple’s intended “iPhone Business Site” at http://www.apple.com/iphone/business/. You can pick up apps, info and support.

Sheila Dawson, Technology Author, HowToMarketYourBusinessNow.com