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Update: Get the latest iPhone CRM news.

It had to happen. Apple’s long awaited iPhone was so popular so quickly that businesses with the little device are already being offered CRM product to run on the doodad.

Companion Link Software got things rolling ‘round about July 4 with a solution providing CRM synchronization for the iPhone. Said solution promises to synchronize contacts and calendar from ACT! by Sage, GoldMine, Lotus Notes, Novell GroupWise, Time & Chaos, Google Apps, and Palm Desktop to the Apple iPhone.

Companion Link is available in “Express” and “Professional” versions. Both versions start at $49.95 and require Microsoft Outlook to be installed. An Outlook-free direct sync by the end of September. A free fourteen-day evaluation version of Companion Link is available at the company’s homepage.

This week, more players – specifically, Etelos and biggie NetSuite – jumped onto the iPhone CRM bandwagon with brand spankin’ new releases.

Etelos announced compatibility of its Customer Relationship Management System with the iPhone’s Safari Web browser. The Etelos CRM suite gives users contact, task, group, sales and project management, group messaging and reporting functionality. CRM for iPhone is seamlessly integrated with Etelos CRM, which currently can be run in Google Apps, Netvibes, Windows Live and Pageflakes.

The iPhone edition is available to Etelos CRM Professional, Enterprise and Developer edition customers immediately. A 24-hour test drive is available to iPhone owners at the specially-crafted site crmforiphone.com.

Etelos provides open source, customizable Web 2.0 applications on various hosting environments.

Meanwhile, biggie NetSuite Inc., a vendor of on-demand, integrated business management application suites for Enterprise Resource Planning, CRM, and e-commerce functionality for small and medium-sized businesses and divisions of large companies, released SuitePhone on Thursday.

SuitePhone is a function that seeks to allow NetSuite customers the opportunity to run business operations using with the iPhone. The new SuitePhone capability provides native support for Safari, which thereby supports NetSuite’s advanced, AJAX-based user interface goodies such as drop-down menus, drag-and-drop portlets, and in-line editing. NetSuite’s essential ERP, CRM and e-commerce functions are immediately available to Apple users, promising an on-demand, integrated business management application designed for the Apple platform.

SuitePhone in tandem with the iPhone allows users to remotely access their financial functionality in areas such as invoicing, accounts receivable, and payroll. Fun stuff that can be done with the Suite iPhone (That’s gotta be the name of the combined offering, right?) includes entering leads, file expense reports, viewing contacts, and placing quotes and orders.

And here comes the throwing of the gauntlet, perhaps the first such toss in relation to iPhone CRM: “Apple has traditionally lacked the software applications required to address the needs of running a sophisticated business,” declared NetSuite CEO Zach Nelson. “Our new SuitePhone capability addresses this need, and makes the iPhone, in combination with NetSuite, one of the more useful and effective tools currently available to manage small- and medium-sized businesses.”

SuitePhone capability and will be available in the NetSuite 2007.0 release which is currently rolling out to existing customers, and will be available to new customers in August.