Yahoo's new CEO informed employees
yesterday that they would be getting the new smartphone of their choice from
Apple, Samsung, Nokia, or HTC. Through the program, Yahoos will have access to
the industry's newest and hottest phones, including the iPhone 5, Samsung
Galaxy S3, HTC Evo 4G LTE, and Nokia Lumia 920.
In addition to purchasing the phones, Yahoo
will also pay employees' voice and data bills.
But what they won't pay for is a
BlackBerry. Once the de rigueur instrument of business communications, RIM's
smartphone was left off the list.
While the offer will go a long way toward
boosting morale at the struggling Web pioneer, it's not likely to please
employees at RIM, which has been struggling to regain lost market share and
sales of its once-popular BlackBerry devices in an industry ruled by Apple and
Android.
Understandably, Mayer is placing her faith
in market leaders iOS and Android. But by choosing Windows Phone 8 -- a
platform that hasn't even landed in consumers' hands -- over BlackBerry, she is
essentially declaring RIM's platform obsolete and dead. And that pretty much
reflects consumer opinion; RIM's marketshare has plummeted from 25 percent in
September 2011 to just barely 1 percent in July, according to a recent Chitika
study.
Mayer's memo, as published by Business
Insider:
We have a very exciting update to share
with you today - we are announcing Yahoo! Smart Phones, Smart Fun! As of today,
Yahoo is moving off of blackberries as our corporate phones and on to
smartphones in 22 countries. A few weeks ago, we said that we would look into
smartphone penetration rates globally and take those rates into account when
deciding on corporate phones. Ideally, we'd like our employees to have devices
similar to our users, so we can think and work as the majority of our users do.
Moving forward, we'll offer you a choice of
devices as well as provide monthly plans for the data and phone.
The smartphone choices that we are
including in the program are:
* Apple iPhone 5
* Android:
- Samsung Galaxy S3
- HTC One X
- HTC EVO 4G LTE
* Windows Phone 8:
- Nokia Lumia 920
We're getting started right away and taking
orders starting now
CNET contacted Yahoo for comment and will
update this report when we learn more.
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