DoD Denies Plans to Ditch BlackBerry for Apple

The U.S. Department of Defense on Thursday said reports this month claiming it plans to end support for BlackBerry smartphones were "in error."

"The department is aware of recent reporting that asserts it is 'dropping' BlackBerry. This reporting is in error. The department recently released its mobility strategy and supporting implementation plan, which clarifies we are moving towards a mobile management capability that supports a variety of devices, to include BlackBerry," Lt. Col. Damien Pickart, an official DoD spokesman, told PCMag.

Earlier this month, Electronista reported that the Pentagon had "decimated" its testing budget for BlackBerry 10, the newly released operating system for BlackBerry smartphones, in order to "save the DoD millions in procurement and personnel costs." On Wednesday, the tech blog said it had learned from unnamed sources that the department planned to order more than 650,000 iOS devices from Apple, including 210,000 iPhones, 120,000 iPads, 100,000 iPad minis, and 200,000 iPod touches, at the conclusion of the sequester.

Pickart said he was not aware of plans to place such a large order for devices from Apple.

"[O]ur mobility experts are looking into what has been reported and are not familiar with the figures quoted in that report/article," he said, referring to Wednesday's Electronista report.

In addition to testing the BlackBerry and iOS platforms for deployment of smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices, the DoD is reportedly putting Google's Android mobile operating system through its paces, which jibes with Pickart's statement that the department is looking to support more than one mobile platform.

"As clarified in the recent release of our Commercial Mobile Device Implementation Plan, we are working towards establishing a multi-vendor environment in support of the DoD mobility strategy," the DoD spokesman said.

"A key objective of the plan is to establish a department-wide mobile enterprise solution that permits the use of the latest commercial technology such as smartphones and tablets, and the development of an enterprise mobile device management capability and application store to support approximately 100,000 multivendor devices by February 2014," he added.

Pickart also broke down the current numbers of mobile devices in operational and pilot use at the DoD. The department supports more than 600,000 commercial mobile devices, he said, including 470,000 BlackBerry devices, 41,000 iOS devices, and 8,700 Android devices.

Later on Thursday, BlackBerry responded to PCMag with the following statement:

"Our work with the U.S. Department of Defense is going well and the U.S. Department of Defense is moving forward with testing of BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10 and the new BlackBerry Z10 smartphone. We are currently working with the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) and anticipate Security Technical Implementation Guides (STIG) and Security Requirement Guide (SRG) approval for the BlackBerry Device Service, BlackBerry 10 and BlackBerry PlayBook by early April. BlackBerry was the first to go through the new SRG process by the Defense Department and will be the first to successfully come out of it."

Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.