[image: DealBook - A Financial News Service of The New York Times]<http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/> <http://www.nytimes.com/adx/bin/adx_click.html?type=cookie&pos=Position1B> May 17, 2010, 1:39 pm In iPhone-BlackBerry War, Standard Chartered Chooses Choice
For a Wall Street financier, few tools are as essential as the BlackBerry. Fingers are all but glued to the device’s plastic keyboard, eyes fixated on its blinking message light. What about the Apple iPhone, with its plethora of apps? Many a banker — or at the least, his or her I.T. department — considers it a toy, not a real work device. But *Standard Chartered<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/standard_chartered/index.html?inline=nyt-org> *, the big Asia-focused bank, has decided to let its employees choose, offering them the option of either smartphone, Reuters reports.<http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/17/in-iphone-blackberry-war-standard-chartered-chooses-choice/%27http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2010/05/17/business/business-us-blackberry-iphone-banks.html?dbk> Plenty of bankers already keep iPhones as their personal (i.e., nonexpensed) phones. But Standard Chartered is letting employees get them on the company plan. More from Reuters: “It’s a groupwide initiative involving wholesale and consumer banks globally,” a Singapore-based spokeswoman for Standard Chartered told Reuters. The spokeswoman declined to be identified due to company policy. The process of migrating corporate email services from the BlackBerry to the iPhone started about a month ago, said the spokeswoman, although she did not know how many of the Asia-focused bank’s 75,000 employees used company-issued BlackBerrys or when the switchover could be completed. Bankers at other financial institutions such as *HSBC Holdings<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/hsbc_holdings_plc/index.html?inline=nyt-org> * and *Morgan Stanley<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/morgan_stanley/index.html?inline=nyt-org> * have so far been restricted to the BlackBerry as the standard device issued by their firms for business communications. Despite some indications of change, it may take time for a broader switch to take place, mainly because of security concerns, according to financial professionals and information technology analysts. “If more companies switch to the iPhone, this is of course bad news for R.I.M.,” said Lu Chialin, an I.T. industry analyst at Macquarie Securities in Taipei. “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 R.I.M.” Back in 2008, an HSBC executive told ZDNet Australia that the British bank was considering switching its employees over to the iPhone. That hasn’t happened — at least, not yet. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "gimik" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/gimik?hl=en.
