The devil is in the details.

Apple has released some nice API hooks for MDM solutions to leverage that can achieve similar restrictions as BES to Blackberry. But the overall security of iOS cannot match BB OS or likely BB10. I can hand an iPhone to our forensic group and within 30 mins or less they can get access to the device, pull all data off it, logs, cache etc. The iPhone takes a snapshot of the screen every few seconds to speed up the transition effect.

Now if you deploy something like Good Technoloy (which more and more companies are doing) you could achieve the BES as Good uses AES, has FIPS, a NOC etc. This comes with a hefty price as Good is presently 3x the BES CAL cost.

This does nothing to secure the larger issue. Apps. Users love them. Their going to want to put corporate data into all kinds of Apps which some use Apple data protection API, so don't. Unlike RIM you have no control over these Apps outside of shutting off AppStore.

At the end of the day no employee wants a restricted iPhone anymore than they wanted a restricted Blackberry. Exspecially if it's their own personal iPhone. Thus you'll see more and more companies only providing virtual access to company data via VM VDI, Citrix and similar. To me this totally negates the benefit of using iPhone. The more is layered on the "secure" iPhone the less appealing it is. Thus why we now have employees with a corporate iPhone and their own.

BYOD is not about employee choice, it's really about employees not wanting to adhere to security and compliance controls. To them it gets in their way of being "productive", be damned those stupid regulations the company needs to follow. The other side is companies now see BYOD as a way to off load enterprise mobile expenses on the employee. It should be a win - win right?

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Apple and Android are primarily a consumer based entertainment company. RIM was and remains an enterprise solution. Sure consumers embraced it as smartphone usage grew but it was moreso a status symbol than being useful (though to this day I'm way more productive with a Blackberry).