US DoD Reportedly Holding Off On Blackberry 10 Testing Due To Insufficient Budget

The Blackberry platform used to be the choice of governments and corporate entities alike, although lately that does not seem to be the case as iOS and Android started to become more favored options. While some governments are starting to explore the possibility by adopting Blackberry Z10s, the Pentagon might not be giving Blackberry a fair chance. According to a report, it seems that the Department of Defense will be cutting their budget for device testing of Blackberry 10. This is because of the 11% budget pullback due to the federal sequester, and since Blackberry 10 has yet to be officially released in the US, the DoD is said to be spending most of their budget on testing of Android and iOS.

According to a report by Electronista, their source reportedly told them “We’re almost done with the iOS and Android platform testing procedure, so that’s fine […] BlackBerry is going to have to suck it up and not get properly tested for a while. Maybe never.” This is definitely not great news for Blackberry, especially since like we said earlier, they were renowned for their security and use by governments and enterprises. So for the DoD to not consider their latest platform is a huge blow to them. Since there has not been any official statement released by the DoD, we guess you should take this with a grain of salt for now.

Update 3/21, 12:00pm: BlackBerry has contacted us with a statement: “Our work with the U.S. Department of Defense is going well and the U.S. Department of Defense is moving forward with testing of BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10 and the new BlackBerry Z10 smartphone.  We are currently working with the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) and anticipate Security Technical Implementation Guides (STIG) and Security Requirement Guide (SRG) approval for the BlackBerry Device Service, BlackBerry 10 and BlackBerry PlayBook by early April. BlackBerry was the first to go through the new SRG process by the Defense Department and will be the first to successfully come out of it.”

Update 3/21, 12:25pm: the U.S Defense Department has communicated this official statement to Ubergizmo: “The department is aware of recent reporting that asserts it is ‘dropping’ BlackBerry. This reporting is in error. The department recently released its mobility strategy and supporting implementation plan, which clarifies we are moving towards a mobile management capability that supports a variety of devices, to include BlackBerry. As clarified in the recent release of our Commercial Mobile Device Implementation Plan, we are working towards establishing a multi-vendor environment in support of the DoD mobility strategy.

The Commercial Mobile Device Implementation Plan updates the June 2012 Mobile Strategy with specific objectives and puts the strategy into action. 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 smart phones and tablets, and the development of an enterprise mobile device management capability and application store to support approximately 100,000 multivendor devices by February 2014. DoD currently has more than 600,000 Commercial Mobile Devices in operational and pilot use, including 470,000 Blackberries, 41,000 Apple Operating Systems and 8,700 Android Systems.”

Tyler Lee
Categories: Cellphones
Tags: BlackBerry, BlackBerry Z10