The suits and ties at Standard Chartered have jumped on the fast-moving Apple bandwagon by officially allowing bankers to replace their boring RIM Blackberries with shiny new iPhones.
According to Reuters, the move by the British-based, international financial institution could eventually result in “thousands” of bankers adopting the iPhone for business communication.
Indeed, the bank is granting its corporate Blackberry users the option of switching to the iPhone, while agreeing to pay monthly billing for business-related telephone and data services.
Lu Chialin, an IT industry analyst at Macquarie Securities in Taipei, told Reuters the decision may not augur well for RIM.
“If more companies switch to the iPhone, this is of course bad news for RIM,” said Chialin.
“However, it will take a long time for companies to do their own internal testing before deciding to change, so it will be a while before it has any effect on RIM.”
Unsurprisingly, Gregory Shea, RIM’s China managing director, attempted to downplay the news by noting that people “are always” switching from one phone to another.
“I saw there were people switching to Blackberries as well. I think the point is it’s a very dynamic market,” claimed Shea.
“There are many very imaginative companies out there. Service providers, vendors, software application developers, very dynamic.”
