RIM may have a new name, operating system and a pair of devices on the way, but Australia’s chief information officer Peter Alexander says that it’s almost too little too late. The comments follow a recent announcement that the country’s Treasury Department would be trading in their BlackBerry devices for iPhones—a seemingly popular trend lately…
ZDNet Australia (via AppleInsider) reports:
“Over the next month and a half, the Australian Department of Treasury will ditch its fleet of BlackBerry mobile phones in favour of iPhone 5s, according to chief information officer Peter Alexander.
The department has traditionally provided BlackBerry devices to staff in the department, four ministers’ offices, and agencies under Treasury; but after Defence Signals Directorate (DSD) certified iOS for government use, Alexander said that the department made a decision to switch over.
“We’re going to use Apple devices as our corporate platform — iPhones and iPads for now,” Alexander told ZDNet.”
So why the switch to iPhones? Alexander says it was all about capabilities, and BlackBerry devices are very limited in what they can and can’t do. The Department also looked into Android phones as a replacement, but the decision ultimately came down to security. Android devices have not been cleared yet by Australia’s Defense Signals Directorate.
There has been somewhat of a mass exodus from BlackBerry to iPhone by government agencies over the past year. Last fall, we saw a number of Stateside departments, including the U.S. Immigration and Customer Enforcement Agency and the National Transportation Safety Board, announce that they would be making the switch from BlackBerry to iPhone.
Today’s announcement comes just a week after Blackberry’s big BB10 event in New York City where it unveiled two new handsets: the Z10 and the Q10. Both are running the company’s all-new BB10 software, and both will be available (here in the US) sometime next month. There’s been some positive feedback on the devices, but again, it might be too little too late.