The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency will be ending its contract with RIM, makers of BlackBerry smartphones and instead be signing a new deal with Apple, purchasing an iPhone for more than 17,600 employees, which comes in at a whopping $2.1 million.
On the move they said,
[RIM] can no longer meet the mobile technology needs of the agency. The iPhone will be used by a variety of agency personnel, including, but not limited to, Homeland Security Investigations, Enforcement and Removal Operations and Office of the Principal Legal Advisor employees. The iPhone services will allow these individuals to leverage reliable, mobile technology on a secure and manageable platform in furtherance of the agency"s mission.
The agency also said to Reuters that it had analysed both Google"s Android and Apple"s iOS and concluded that Apple"s iPhone offered the best technology for them due to Apple"s tight controls on the operating system and hardware.
This doesn"t come as a surprise as BlackBerry smartphones have so far failed to keep up with competition, however RIM hopes to regain ground with it"s BlackBerry 10 software and devices.
Source: Reuters Images: Apple, BlackBerry