Silicon Alley Insider reports that Microsoft will no longer compensate employees who use iPhones and BlackBerrys for Microsoft related work. I think the most surprising thing is that Microsoft was even footing the bill in the first place.
Microsoft won’t pay for its employees’ Apple (AAPL) iPhone data service plans anymore, even if they’re used significantly for work purposes. Nor will it pay for Research In Motion (RIMM) BlackBerry service, or a new Palm Pre. Instead, it will only reimburse data plans for Microsoft Windows Mobile-powered smartphones.
I wonder what percentage of Microsoft employees actually use Windows Mobile devices. Any guesses?
June 15th, 2009 at 6:09 pm
I agree; I’m surprised that they didn’t have a strict MS-only policy in the first place.
I bet Apple could offer to pay service plans for all of its employees, even if they chose to use WiMo, Blackberry, the Pre, Android, or Symbian, but most would *chose* to stick with their (well, free, 1st gen) iPhone.
I do understand that the iPhone dev/marketing (or WiMo dev) team should be forced to use the device so they can sympathize with users, but trying to punish all of your employees for the sins of the WiMo group, forcing them to use an inferior product, is just lousy from a business sense. Is the work they’re doing on their iPhone itself a problem? Are they too happy and productive and making the rest of the WiMo using employees look bad? What’s the deal?
What they’ll see is that the employees with iPhones will just pony up and pay the service plans themselves instead of switching to WiMo. Will the leadership learn nothing? This is great market intelligence: your product sucks and even insiders prefer a better alternative. At least you have something to aim for: copy the product they like, right?