9:05 AM -- Here's a possible managed service for a mobile operator: controlling and updating an enterprise's fleet of smartphones.

InnoPath Software Inc. has just started marketing that idea and hopes to have a customer to show off soon.

I think it sounds interesting. "More interesting if we've got a customer paying for it," says Innopath marketing manager Jason Lackey.

InnoPath offers software for remotely managing mobile devices, and that's mostly what Lackey and VP of marketing David Ginsburg were talking about at CTIA. It lets helpdesk personnel peek into a phone's configuration and make changes or firmware upgrades as necessary. (See InnoPath Gets Busy.)

Imagine if your mechanic could tweak your car from his living room. It's like that.

Taking that idea a step further, what if a service provider offered to manage an enterprise's mobile devices? Security patches could be delivered to all the phones at once. Or a must-have application could be distributed to an entire engineering team.

InnoPath could target enterprises directly with this idea, but I could see some IT departments balking at it. The company's sales experience has been with the mobile operators mostly, so that's probably where its best shot lies.

— Craig Matsumoto, West Coast Editor, Light Reading