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US Senate finally dumps BlackBerry
It's the end of an era.
The US Senate's Sergeant at Arms (SAA) announced earlier this week that staffers would no longer be able to request new BlackBerry OS 10 devices for official work. That includes the Q10, Z10, Z30, Passport and Classic. In their place, the SAA is offering use of the Samsung Galaxy S6 on Android or the 16GB iPhone SE.
Existing BlackBerry users won't be left high and dry, should they decline to transition to another OS. BlackBerry support will continue for the foreseeable future and replacement devices will be available for however the SAA's current stock of 610 mobile devices last.
This is a significant moment in BlackBerry's history. I mean, the company used to utterly dominate the mobile device market thanks to its focus on security, email (remember, this was before messaging and social media took off) and a physical keyboard (again, this was the era before Swiftkey).
iOS and Android did manage to catch up to the BlackBerry OS within a matter of years, resulting in the company's precipitous decline and subsequent flirtations with bankruptcy.
But the wheels of government turn slowly -- especially when it comes to the adoption of new technologies. Even after the general public -- and the President himself -- abandoned BBOS for competing systems, BlackBerry handsets persisted on Capitol Hill for more than a decade. But not anymore.
