EXCLUSIVE: Home improvement retailer Home Depot plans to replace thousands of BlackBerry smartphones issued to its managerial and corporate staffers with versions of Apple's iPhone 4S, AppleInsider has learned.
National chain Home Depot will abandon BlackBerry phones in favor of Apple's iPhone (image via Home Depot)
People familiar with the big-box retailer's plans said the company has already begun the process of abandoning the Blackberry platform for Apple's iOS, specifically for store managers and all corporate level employees.
A representative for the home improvement chain confirmed the news to AppleInsider, saying the move will displace roughly 10,000 Blackberry smartphones.
"We are replacing our current base of BlackBerry technology with iPhones," the representative said, clarifying that the move applies only to store managers, district managers, other corporate-level staffers, and field ops.
"We are replacing our current base of BlackBerry technology with iPhones," a representative for Home Depot confirmed.
The initiative will not yet impact the approximately 60,000 rugged Motorola smartphones (34,000+ so-called "First Phones" and 25,000+ "First Phone Jrs") used by store employees. Those devices will remain in operation on retail store floors for mobile point-of-sale, analytical, walkie-talkie, and traditional telephony purposes.
As of the third quarter of 2012, the Atlanta, Georgia-based corporation operated some 2,252 retail stores across the United States, Canada, China, and Mexico, making it the world's world's largest home improvement specialty retailer. Managers at those stores will see their current BlackBerry handsets replaced with iPhones in the coming weeks, according to those familiar with the matter.
Home Depot, which is also the fifth largest retailer in the world, earning $947 million in profit on $18.13 billion in revenue in its most recently reported quarter, is the latest in a series of corporate and regulatory heavyweights to dump the BlackBerry platform that once served as the de facto standard in mobile enterprise technology.
In October of last year, the U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agency announced it would ditch BlackBerry in a move that would see it purchase $2.1 million iPhones for its more than 17,600 employees. Similar announcements followed from the National Transportation Safety Board and, more recently, Australia's Treasury Department.
66 Comments
And the stock will get hammered on this news. /s
The snow ball is getting bigger and bigger
This is why BB is still pretty fucked. No major company worth its salt is going to switch to the new BBs as its a completely new device and platform. At the very least they will wait until v2 to assess, and in that time iOS will make more and more headway into the enterprise as an extremely mature and tested platform. Some large companies who have been asessing the iPhone since 2008 are just now deciding to switch.
Wow this sucks so much for BB. I mean these companies had all this time to ditch them but they did not do it, just to wait till BB just released new phones and new OS to do so. WTF?
[quote name="xtacee1990" url="/t/155885/home-depot-abandoning-blackberry-platform-in-favor-of-apples-iphone-and-ios#post_2274238"]Wow this sucks so much for BB. I mean these companies had all this time to ditch them but they did not do it, just to wait till BB just released new phones and new OS to do so. WTF? [/quote] 1. Maybe their contracts just expired. 2. Maybe they wanted to see if the new phones would be worthwhile - and decided that they weren't. 3. Maybe they just wanted to punish RIM for letting them down. Who knows?