BlackBerry, long a fixture in the Pentagon, could shortly face huge challenges from Apple and Samsung for contracts to sell millions of smartphones and tablets to the US Defense Department. Both are expected to clear security testing which would let the US military buy their smartphones and tablets in the next few weeks.
The Pentagon currently has about 600,000 smartphone users – almost all using BlackBerrys – but ultimately aims to have as many as 8m smartphones and tablets, under the terms of a scheme made public last November.
While BlackBerry has long been approved by the Pentagon for secure use, Apple's iOS 6 and Samsung's security-hardened version of Android, called "Knox", are now being examined by the Defense Information Systems Agency.
"We are working towards establishing a multi-vendor environment that supports a variety of devices and operating systems, to include Samsung, Apple and BlackBerry," Lieutenant Colonel Damien Pickart, a Pentagon spokesman, told Reuters. "A key objective of the plan is to establish a department-wide mobile enterprise solution that permits the use of the latest commercial technology such, as smartphones and tablets," he added.
However, BlackBerry could yet benefit from the arrival of its rivals because the Pentagon mandates the use of mobile device management software to control the devices and ensure their security. BlackBerry has proposed its Balance software to carry out that task.
The Pentagon unveiled a plan in February aimed at giving the military services a much broader range of choices among mobile devices. The department currently has 470,000 BlackBerry users, 41,000 Apple users and 8,700 people with Android devices. However, most of the Apple and Android systems are in pilot or test programmes.
Source: The Guardian
