After BlackBerry, now it is Apple and Samsung, in a talk with the Department of Defence. These discussions can make the first base for companies to expand their business within the employees of the agency. As per the reports of the Wall Street Journal, the department is planning to finalise the security approval for iPhone and iPad from Apple and Galaxy series of smartphones from Samsung within the coming weeks.
The commercial technology to be used by Pentagon is determined by the Defence Information Systems Agency, and within the coming two weeks, the agency is going to decide if it will grant approval for the Galaxy range of smartphones from Samsung powered with Knox security software for the purpose of internal communications through e-mails or it will opt for the iOS 6 from Apple, which claims to have a fantastic deal of security, sufficient for the purpose of communication of the agencies, in early May. The agency at the same time, can approve both the products, if they succeed to meet with their steep standards.
In this context, the exclusive contract of the US Defence Department with BlackBerry was dropped in last October, which resulted in an open bidding for all the major tech companies including Samsung and Apple. Pentagon explained the opening up of bid as it was not exactly dropping all the BlackBerry devices in use, but it is only opening up to broaden the reach with the device makers. To get into the details of the data which explains the extent of use of mobile devices from various brands by the department, the dominating position of the BlackBerry can be clearly seen. Amongst more than 600,000 devices in use, 470,000 are BlackBerry; 41,000 are from the house of Apple and 8,700 runs Android from Google.
As reported, the department has announced that eventually it will need 8 million devices, and the companies which can meet with its guidelines, specifically with the security guidelines, can have a chunk of the contract. According to reports BlackBerry device steeply dominates the US government sector, and even if Apple and Samsung got the approval from the Department, it does not mean an immediate contract of thousands and lakhs of devices, but the approval will surely eliminate the need of any security reviews at an organizational level.