The BlackBerry loses another government agency to the iPhone

Research In Motion is having a bit of a hard time of late. Their BlackBerry brand of smartphones are seeing slower sales than the Canadian firm is accustomed to, and the company’s PlayBook tablet is floundering at best.

Business across the globe are dropping BlackBerry as their smartphone handset and business software provider in droves, and now it appears that there is another nail being driven into the RIM coffin, with the news that The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is dropping BlackBerry in favor of the iPhone.

The ATF’s Chief Information Office claims that the agency is going to “delete the BlackBerry form the mix,” which cannot be good reading for RIM’s latest CEO

The agency will swap out almost 4,000 BlackBerry smartphones across a twelve month period, with many of those device being replaced by Apple’s iPhone. The reason? It all comes down to features and ease of use.

“Video streaming, GPS capability, capabilities, the camera … a variety of things. Yes, these things exist on BlackBerrys, but in terms of ease of use and adaptability of the devices, the iPhones are the more functional and compelling use case.”

The iPhone is steadily gaining in strength in the enterprise market, with Apple’s last few iOS updates adding features and security options that are needed for companies to reliably roll out smartphones across a workforce. Remote wiping for example was high on the wish-list for many.

These are troubling times for the once proud RIM, and while not exactly our cup of tea, we can only hope they star around for a long time. As we’ve said many, many times before: the more competition for Apple, the better our iPhones will be.

[Politico]