Bank Gives BlackBerry The Boot for iPhone

Είναι ένα μεγάλο βήμα για την Apple αλλά χάσιμο για την Blackberry.

It’s one small step for Apple, one giant leap backwards for BlackBerry.

Standard Chartered, the mega-British bank with locations in better than 70 nations around the world, is bucking the BlackBerry as its “standard corporate communications device,” according to a report Monday from Reuters. “It’s a group-wide initiative involving wholesale and consumer banks globally,” a company rep told the newswire, noting that Standard Chartered will continue picking up the tab on monthly billing for business-related telephone and data services.

Why is this significant? For starters, Standard Chartered has roughly 75,000 employees. That’s a whole lot of potential iPhone sales – and not just for employees presently without a work-issued handset. Employees currently using a BlackBerry have also been cleared to drop the BlackBerry (if they choose to do so) and switch to the iPhone. As the coverage indicates, the transition from BlackBerry to iPhone in a major financial institution is far from commonplace. Many prominent firms, like HSBC Holdings and Morgan Stanley, won’t touch an iPhone with a ten foot pole and remain staunch BlackBerry loyalists.

Standard Chartered, however, is breaking the BlackBerry’s grip as the “standard corporate communications device” for a major multinational financial establishment. And it wouldn’t be utterly astounding if others soon follow suit, especially with Apple poised and ready to seize a bigger chunk of the enterprise market later this year with the release of the 4th gen iPhone – the most business-friendly model of Apple’s smartphone to date.

via modmyi