Pentagon to Order 650,000 iOS Devices, Ditch BB10?; DoD Says It is Only Moving to Multiple Devices
Web site Tech Crunch reported on Wednesday that the U.S. Department of Defense is allegedly planning to purchase 650,000 units of iOS devices, in effect ditching the newly released BlackBerry 10 over cost considerations.
Quoting Electronista, Tech Crunch said the new iOS-run gadgets would replace older BB models incompatible with the new BB OS. The 650,000 is said to be broken down into 120,000 iPads, 100,000 iPad minis, 200,000 iPod touches and 210,000 different iPhone models.
More than half will be sent to American soldiers deployed in the battlefield and the rest will be used by office-based Pentagon employees, the report said.
Pentagon has 470,000 BBs which was the preferred mobile unit by the department because of its security features. Due to the incompatibility of the new BBs with the previous BB OS, the department issued a device agnostic memorandum intended to assist Pentagon smartphone users in smoothly sharing classified information.
The department also has 41,000 Apple iOS gadgets and 8,700 Android units.
The report came out two days before the Friday availability in the U.S. of the Z10 smartphone running BB10 on AT&T for $199.99 and a two-year contract. The qwerty-keyboard model Q10 will be sold by other U.S. carriers in the coming weeks.
Some bloggers in Tech Crunch, however, belittled the report. Vudufish cited a Computerworld articled that Pentagon has denied it is ditching BB, while GreatWN said the department had refuted the report and chided the author for not checking her facts.
"We are not dumping Blackberry as Electronista and others have indicated ... We're moving to multiple devices, and that includes Blackberry," Computerworld quoted Pentagon spokesman, Air Force Lt. Col. Damien Pickart.
Poster francois sought the Apple press release regarding the order. He pointed that any business would issue a major press release prior to the launch by a competitor of a new product.
However, HollyBolly opted to believe in the article and said the new purchase partly explains the trillion dollar debt of the U.S. government. "Now I understand why Tim Cook was dating Obama earlier this year," HollyBolly wrote.
