“The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is planning to start the process of ditching Research in Motion’s signature BlackBerry wireless phone largely in favor of the iPhone, the agency’s top tech official told Politico,” David Saleh Rauf reports for Politico. “‘We’re going to delete the BlackBerry from the mix,’ Rick Holgate, ATF’s chief information officer, said in an interview.”

“That move — which includes swapping out about 3,800 BlackBerrys — should be complete in ‘probably no more than a year,’ he said,” Rauf reports. “More than 60 percent of the replacement devices are initially slated to be iPhones.”

Rauf reports, “It marks the second major federal agency to recently announce plans to divorce the BlackBerry in favor of a romance with Apple’s smartphone. NOAA, according to media reports, is planning to start the process of exchanging some 3,000 BlackBerrys with iPhones and replacing RIM servers by June. The transition at ATF is going to take shape even sooner. March has been set as the target month to start replacing some 2,400 BlackBerrys assigned to special agents in the field with iPhones.”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: At the ATF, Amateur Hour is over.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers "Fred Mertz," "Rainy Day," and "GetMeOnTop" for the heads up.]