A few years ago if the question as to which phone operating system a government or enterprise would choose to use were to be asked, it’s a safe bet to say that the majority would reply with Blackberry. Times has since changed and Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android are starting to become favorites in such organizations, and according to the folks at Electronista, they have received word that the US Department of Defense has plans to purchase a whopping 650,000 units of iOS devices.
The order is said to take place after the government sequester, and of that 650,000 units, 120,000 units will be iPads, 100,000 will be iPad minis, another 200,000 will be the iPod touch, and the remaining 210,000 devices will be a mixture of iPhones of different generations.
The US Department of Defense was also said to have considered Blackberry 10, but apparently the need for new mobile devices is extremely urgent so testing of Blackberry 10 will have to wait for another time. To make matters worse for Blackberry who is already fighting to reclaim some market share, these new iOS devices are said to be replacements for older Blackberry devices that were used in the past. Since older Blackberry models are not compatible with Blackberry 10, they had to replace them.
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