U.S. Government Clears Apple Devices for Military Use

By Gilbert Falso :: 3:31 PM

The Pentagon announced yesterday that it has approved the use of certain Apple mobile devices on military and government networks. This paves the way for Apple to compete in the government arena with devices from rivals like Samsung and BlackBerry.

In a statement released by the Pentagon, the Department of Defense declared that Apple products running iOS 6 as the operating system have been vetted by military and government IT tests to access restricted government networks.

BlackBerry has long been a favorite platform for military use, but has fallen out of favor as many employees prefer Apple and Android devices on their personal time. Until the recent BlackBerry upgrade and offering of its new Z10 handset, much of BlackBerry’s technology was dated, compared to other offerings. Earlier this month, the Pentagon approved military use of several of Samsung’s Android-based devices.

According to statistics published by the Department of Defense, there are about 600,000 mobile devices in use across the agency. These include 470,000 BlackBerry handsets, 41,000 Apple devices and 8,700 Android devices. Until now, most of the Apple and Android products at the agency were not connected to military networks.