Samsung is selling their Galaxy line of devices like hotcakes with the Galaxy S IV selling over 20 million units, and that’s just a single device, but we know that Samsung is worried and that they expected to sell even more devices by now, so they are looking for more ways to move the stock they have and put the Galaxy brand everywhere they can.
According to Reuters, Samsung is looking to replace Blackberry phones as the device of choice of the U.S., Federal Bureau of Investigation, that’s right, no other than the FBI, and that means a lot of devices to be sold, because we know they won’t be giving them as a gift.
The FBI has more than 35,000 employees and securing a deal like this would be huge, not only for the amount of devices, which in the grand scheme of things is not that high, but for the press they would receive, if Samsung phones are good enough and secure for the FBI, then they must be good for everyone else, both regular people and governments all over the world.
Samsung is offering their devices because they have an extra security layer on top of Android, which by itself isn’t secure enough for the needs of the FBI, that layer is called Knox and Samsung recently got the security approval by the Defense Department along with Blackberry 10 devices. Obviously, Samsung has an edge over BB10 mostly because of the ecosystem, Android already has applications for many things and the FBI could even throw in every modification they want.
Although not everyone agrees with this, Rob Enderle, main analyst of the Enderle Group, claims that Android, even with Knox on top of it is not a secure system:
“If you are going to tackle security, you kind of have to do it throughout the entire platform. It’s not that Samsung doesn’t want to – it is that they don’t own the operating system so they cannot. If you’re going to sell into government, you have to be able to provide a secure solution and Android isn’t it yet.”
Adding to those claims, U.S Representative Kenny Marchant of Texas expressed his doubts in a letter to the FBI:
“I understand that the FBI may be considering a new solution that is a patchwork of technologies stitched together. I am concerned that this approach may prove to be more costly than other alternatives.”
The FBI did not made a comment on this, but we don’t expect them to so we’ll have to wait and see what happens, we’re sure Samsung will let us know it happen when they close the deal. Samsung is said to be also working on a similar deal with the U.S. Navy, only a smaller one.
If Samsung manages to close the deal, they would be putting Blackberry one step closer to extinction. We already know their devices are not selling so great, they have almost no market share, and they are losing the few deals they had with government agencies that kept them alive, in October, they lost the deal with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to Apple’s iPhone and that agency has 17,600 workers.
Blackberry has to be working on something to fight back and keep those deals alive, although they seem to be fighting a lost battle, Android and iOS have taken over the world, and for now it looks like there’s no room for a third OS.