Apple’s move into enterprise continues unabated. Despite the imminent launch of Blackberry 10, it companies are pushing ahead with their adaptation of Apple’s mobile devices.
Eariler this week Bloomberg reported that, “the National Transportation Safety Board, which investigates plane accidents, disclosed its plan to switch to Apple Inc.’s iPhone 5 in a document posted last week to a federal website. The BlackBerrys have been “failing both at inopportune times and at an unacceptable rate.”
RIM’s CEO Heins defended his company’s product by stating, “Many of these devices sit on BlackBerry 5 or BlackBerry 6, not even on BlackBerry 7, so the experience is not what I know and what other BlackBerry users know in the consumer domain. It is a three-, four-year-old experience.”
However, this appeal appears to have little effect on the folks in the enterprise. Today, The Channel website is reporting that the top UK bank – Barclays bought 8,500 Apple iPads for its employees.
According to the report:
She said the device will be used “to assist our branch colleagues to interact with customers, improving the customer experience”.
“We investigated a number of different tablet options and in this instance, we concluded that iPads were the best solution for their specific needs. We are now starting to use these across Barclays branches in the UK,” she said.
Barclays did not provide any detailed explanation on why it opted for Apple as opposed to one of the also-ran devices, but it is planning to use an app called Mortgage Brain that was specially designed for the iPad.
Mortgage Brain is jointly owned by six banks including Barclays Woolwich, RBS, Virgin Money, Santander, Lloyds TSB and Nationwide.[/quote]
Sources: Bloomberg, The Channel
