J.D. Power and Associates has ranked Apple’s iPhone #1 in business user satisfaction, this despite the iPhone’s reputation as being a more consumer-oriented device that doesn’t have the chops to be a business phone. In a survey of 1,388 business smart phone users, the company found that Apple ranked particularly high in the category of ease of operation.

"With the introduction of the iPhone in 2007, Apple has clearly differentiated itself from the competition in areas that are most important to business smartphone users," Kirk Parsons, senior director of wireless services for J.D. Power and Associates, said in a statement. "By making basic applications and features easy to use and providing functionality in a thin, lightweight device, Apple has performed well in exceeding customer expectations."

In J.D. Power’s survey, customers were asked to rate the various handset manufacturers in five categories, each weighted according to the percentage included below:

• Ease of operation (27%)
• Operating system (24%)
• Physical design (21%)
• Handset features (18%)
• Battery aspects (10%)

Apple ranked highest among the manufacturers with a score of 778 out of a possible 1,000. The company’s highest rated areas were ease of operation, physical design, and handset features.

Perhaps more importantly, Apple’s nearest competition was Research in Motion and its BlackBerry franchise, which scored a distant second with a score of 703. Samsung was third with a score of 701.

In the September quarter, Apple giddily announced that it had sold more phone handsets than RIM, with RIM having been until then the market leader in smartphones.

Other interesting tidbits from the J.D. Power survey include the fact that while 86% of Motorola smartphone customers use a wireless headset (the highest in the survey), iPhone customers came in with the lowest number of wireless headset users at 60%.

The firm also compiled a top five list of reasons given for choosing a smartphone brand: Internet capability (45%), ability to use e-mail account (41%), overall design/style (39%), Bluetooth capabilities (37%) and keyboard style (e.g., QWERTY) (37%).

Lastly, it seems that even business people play games. J.D. Power found that games were the number one third party download for business customers, with 49% having reported downloading games to their devices. Apps that were actually business-related were second at 43%, and travel-related apps were third with 36% of users downloading such apps to their phones.

The company released the following chart showing how the companies rated in the survey scored. Please note that while the total scale of the actual rating system is 1,000 points, the graph bars are shown on an 800 point scale.