Ford plans to ditch Blackberry for thousands of iPhones by end of 2014

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Siri Eyes Free is coming to 2011 model Fords and earlier.
Siri Eyes Free is coming to 2011 model Fords and earlier.
Photo: Ford

Apple scored a major corporate client today in Ford, the second largest U.S. automaker.

Ford has announced that it is switching from Blackerry to the iPhone, and new iPhones will be in the hands of thousands of employees by the end of 2014.

3,300 Ford workers will be given iPhones in the coming months, and 6,000 more employees will receive iPhones over the next two years. Ford has 181,000 employees worldwide, many of which have still been using flip phones on the job.

“It meets the overall needs of the employees because it is able to serve both our business needs in a secure way and the needs we have in our personal lives with a single device,” a Ford spokeswoman told Bloomberg, referring to the decision to switch to iPhone.

The move is an obvious blow to Blackberry, a company that once reigned in the corporate world and now possesses less than 1% of smartphone market share.

Ford’s decision was likely prompted by Apple’s recently announced partnership with IBM to push iOS in the world of enterprise.

Tim Cook has said that Apple sees a big opportunity for growth in enterprise, an area where its footprint is pretty light. Apple currently has devices in the vast majority of Fortune 500 companies, but the number of devices deployed within those companies is much lower than it could be.

Source: Bloomberg

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