Ford ditches BlackBerry phones for the iPhone

By Mike Flacy July 29, 2014

Shifting a large enterprise contract from BlackBerry to Apple, the Ford Motor Company announced plans to replace more than 3,000 employee BlackBerry phones with the iPhone before the end of 2014.

Totaling out to 3,300 smartphones in all, Ford will be hiring a “mobile technology analyst” to manage the shift from the BlackBerry platform to devices that utilize iOS. According to representatives at Ford, the company will not be paying any additional cost to upgrade to the iPhone beyond the cost of the hardware. The company believes that the new platform will offer a simpler interface for employees to understand as well as heightened security.

‘We’re going to get everyone on iPhones.’

Speaking about the shift from BlackBerry to Apple, Ford global communications manager Sara Tatchio told Bloomberg “We are going to get everyone on iPhones. It meets the overall needs of the employees because it is able to serve both our business needs in a secure way and the needs we have in our personal lives with a single device.”

Alternatively, BlackBerry communications VP Adam Emery released a statement to Bloomberg which read “While we can’t comment on this customer, we understand that there is diversity and choice in the market. Enterprises should think twice about relying on any solution built on the foundation of a consumer technology that lacks the proven security benefits that BlackBerry has always delivered.”

Of course, this isn’t the first, large enterprise customer that BlackBerry has lost over the last few years. During early 2013, Home Depot announced a shift from BlackBerry to iPhone for approximately 10,000 employees. A few months prior to that, the U.S. Immigration and Customs agency announced a similar change for more than 17,000 employees.

On the consumer side, T-Mobile ran a promotion during early 2014 that encouraged customers to switch from a BlackBerry to the iPhone. This marketing campaign didn’t sit well with BlackBerry management which ended the company’s relationship with T-Mobile.

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