BlackBerry may be losing consumers left and right, but when it comes to certain parts of the government that requires security more than anything else, it’s still the king. And it has managed to win another (big) contract from Pentagon.
On January 31st, the U.S. military will fire-up its new management system to enable its workforce to keep working even when they leave the office. The $16 million plan is designed to mobile-ize up to 300,000 military users, while making sure they don’t leak data or corrupt networks while on the go.
To make this happen, Pentagon is buying a ton of new device, 80,000 of which are made by the Canadian company. We’re not sure which models they opted for, and can only hope they run BlackBerry OS 10. In addition, DoD will also buy some 1,800 iOS and Android phones as well as iPads and Samsung’s 10.1-inch tablets (most likely Galaxy Note 10.1).
At the end of this month, Pentagon mobile users will be able to access a secure app store with 16 apps, as well as encryption keys for the Defense Department and enterprise email. Going forward, an update will be launched at the end of the May to allow editing of Microsoft Office files.
Perhaps this is the way to go for BlackBerry – win big with governments all around the world and build from there? We’ll see how that goes.
[Via: NextGov, PhoneArena]