“Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup Inc. are considering whether to let employees use the Apple Inc. phone as an alternative to Research In Motion Ltd.’s BlackBerry for corporate e-mail, said three people familiar with the plans,” Miller reports. “The banks are testing software for the iPhone that’s designed to make it secure enough for company messages, said the people, who didn’t want to be named because the plans aren’t public.”
MacDailyNews Note: Bank of America has approximately 284,000 employees; Citigroup has about 258,000.
“Apple, led by Chief Executive Officer Jobs, said last month that 80 percent of the Fortune 500 companies are deploying or testing the iPhone, including Procter & Gamble Co. and General Electric Co. JPMorgan Chase & Co. is exploring whether to let workers use iPhones and Android phones for corporate e-mail, two people familiar with the bank’s plans said in September,” Miller reports. “The trials at Bank of America and Citigroup involve more than 1,000 employees, two people said. Testing, which typically takes four to six weeks, is advanced at Bank of America and will be followed by a pilot project before potentially wider implementation, one person said.”
Miller reports, “Apple is working to improve the iPhone’s security by strengthening encryption tools, adding the ability to set longer passcodes and integrating with server computers that can wipe out or lock an iPhone if it’s lost. The company also enlisted computer-services provider Unisys Corp. to help it sell more devices to corporate customers.”
“About 42 percent of BlackBerry users say they want to stick with the brand when they buy a new phone, according to an August survey by Nielsen,” Miller reports. “The rate is 89 percent for iPhone owners…”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Lynn W.,” “Edward W.,” and “Dan K.” for the heads up.]
How is Android doing in enterprise with their swiss cheese OS and their malware riddled App store?
As Bruce Willis once said, welcome to the party, pal.
Yippi cai ya mofo!
All but one of our staff with company-paid phones has gone iPhone. The lone holdout got a new Blackberry Torch last week, as he specifically wanted a physical keypad.
Gotta love Blackberry users — stuck in the 1980’s with their fax machines and VCRs.
who are the 11% who want to switch from the iphone?
But Dell is moving their employees to WinMoPho 7!
Isn’t that the better way to go?
{/sarcasm}
Physical keyboards are hard to type on. You have to have small fingers or you hit more then one key at a time.
Why do people like physical keypads on phones?
A friend of mine who is looking at a new job wants me to teach him how to use a blackberry. I told him for only knowing basic computer stuff to begin with you won’t understand a bb but an iPhone is easier to understand. He is sure that he should learn bb though because he saw a few people using bb so was sure he should learn thAt too.
I would bet that blackberry demographics are older males and older people in general then iPhone and android.
a friend of mine at KPMG said their IT will begin supporting the iPhone shortly as well, a company that actually forced him from iPhone to Blackberry only 6 months ago – the enterprise tide is turning.
RIP R.I.M
The Blackberry data plan that is flat rate internationally will keep me on one as long as I travel outside of the US. Unfortunately.
For a real corporate win we’d need a data plan that wasn’t the size of a mortgage payment after a trip to Europe….