Now Ford dumps BlackBerry for Apple

Car maker ditches BlackBerry devices in favour of Apple

Ford has become the latest major company to ditch BlackBerry devices, this time in favour of Apple iPhones.

The move is being made in response to staff demand.

"It meets the overall needs of the employees because it is able to serve both our business needs in a secure way and the needs we have in our personal lives with a single device," Ford spokesperson Sara Tatchio told Bloomberg.

The car maker intends to replace more than 3,300 BlackBerry devices with Apple iPhones by the end of the year, while a further 6,000 will be migrated from BlackBerry to Apple in the next two years.

The switch by Ford follows defections from BlackBerry by a number of major organisations in recent years. These include US retail giant Home Depot, and technology companies Cisco and Dell.

The Ford deal comes hot on the heels of a partnership between Apple and IBM to make business software for Apple iPhones and iPads.

However, Ford is not cutting BlackBerry out entirely: earlier this year, the car maker selected BlackBerry's highly rated QNX operating system in preference to Microsoft for its Sync in-car technology hub.

The deal represented a big win for BlackBerry, ousting Microsoft from its top customer in the automotive sector with some seven million vehicles using the current Microsoft-powered version of Sync.