Even after the popularity of BlackBerrys among consumers went into a tailspin, it was widely assumed that their security features would keep law enforcement agencies loyal to the brand.
But the decision by the Department of Homeland Security to switch 17,676 employees at its Immigration and Customs Enforcement branch to iPhones from BlackBerrys suggests even that assumption no longer holds true for Research in Motion, the maker of BlackBerry.
The $2.1 million iPhone contract was awarded in late September and revealed last week in a government document explaining why it was not opened to competitive tenders.
After eight years of using BlackBerrys, the agency concluded that the once-leading smartphones were too far behind the times to meet its needs.
The agency said it had “evolving mobile law enforcement business requirements that require the use of more capable and dynamic mobile technology.â€
RIM's decline has also prompted concerns at th e agency that the company, like its competitor Nokia, may not survive. Products from those two companies, the document said, “help to define the smartphone market.â€
But it added: “Both companies failed to innovate and consumers have rejected them. The net effect is that both firms have been relegated to laggards in the consumer market which has made them too risky for adoption as a ‘go-to' choice for enterprise use.â€
The report's analysis praised RIM, along with Apple, for controlling both the hardware and software sides of their phones, ranking both equal in terms of security. But it gave Apple extra points for consistency.
“A hallmark of Apple's technology and business strategy is the strict adherence to product uniformity,†the report said.
The report noted that ICE is not the only federal agency with law enforcement duties to find that the iPhone now best meets its needs. It indicated that the Federal Air Marshall Service, the Coast Guard and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives have all made the switch.
In a statement, Paul Lucier, the vice president of government solutions at RIM, did not directly address the decision by ICE. But he said: “We have one million government customers in North America alone who depend on BlackBerry, and more than 400,000 government customers worldwide upgraded their devices in the past year.â€
On Monday, RIM separately released a study it had commissioned indicating that the British government would initially increase its smartphone costs by 39 percent if it allowed employees to use a variety of phones rather than just BlackBerrys. The paper, which was written by the firm Strategic Analytics, concluded that a BlackBerry-only workplace would costs 14 percent less to operate.
The report also argued that limiting employees to BlackBerrys would still provide superior security compared to allowing a variety of different phones to connect with the government's computer systems.
