Samsung wins order from military as it takes business away from BlackBerry

Samsung could be replacing BlackBerry as the smartphone of choice for the U.S. military. The Army recently gave an order to Samsung for 7000 smartphones, and another order for several thousand more could soon be coming from the NSA, according to people familiar with the situation. The army order was for Samsung's Nett Warrior system which gives a soldier a chest mounted Samsung GALAXY Note II phablet for use on the battlefield. Sammy already had a contract to supply the military with the Nett Warrior system, and the new order expands the number of GALAXY Note II units Samsung has in combat.

Samsung, in a comment, said that it is seeing great progress in having its devices adopted by the military. BlackBerry has always had a step on other smartphone manufacturers thanks to its secure OS. But by getting orders from the military, Samsung might be able to snag more orders from corporations, who in the past had to rely on BlackBerry handsets.

With the troubles that BlackBerry has had keeping customers, its market share among businesses has dropped from 70% in 2010 to 5% last year And once you lose those customers, it's nearly impossible to win them back. BlackBerry has indeed won some new customers including ITC in India. In addition, current customer DATEV in Germany will add BES and 1000 BlackBerry phones. But here is an example of what is ailing BlackBerry. The company says it has 80,000 business customers, but 50,000 are using BlackBerry OS 7 instead of the new BlackBerry OS 10. Of the 4.3 million BlackBerry phones sold in the third quarter, 3.2 million were sales of the older platform.

With Samsung making progress in BlackBerry's old neighborhood, the latter doesn't have too much time trying to win back the affections of the enterprise and the military.

source: WSJ