Apple Drives Ford Away from BlackBerry to iPhones

Are we already seeing the impact of the recent Apple (AAPL)/IBM (IBM) enterprise mobility alliance? Automobile maker Ford said it’s an Apple shop now, swapping out some 3,300 of its workers’ BlackBerry (BBRY) smartphones for iPhones and planning to similarly equip another 6,000 employees in the next two years.

Neither company announced terms of the deal, financial or otherwise. At this point, there’s no word as to how many iPhones Ford intends to order, nor any specifics on the models it has in mind. It’s also unclear if there’s an upgrade path to the agreement, considering Apple is only months away from unwrapping a new edition of the iPhone, perhaps a large screen phablet.

Apple’s Ford deal comes one week after IBM agreed to build some 100 iOS business-centric apps and Apple handed IBM sales teams access to resell iPhones and iPads to its corporate customers.

Ford, which employs about 181,000 people worldwide, intends to “get everyone on iPhones,” a spokeswoman told Bloomberg. “It meets the overall needs of the employees because it is able to serve both our business needs in a secure way and the needs we have in our personal lives with a single device.”

The auto maker currently is looking to hire a mobile technology specialist to oversee the deployment of iPhones to its workforce globally. Ford is making “no extra investment” to convert to iPhones, the spokeswoman said.

Ford’s move to overthrow BlackBerry’s handsets is a bit surprising considering the auto manufacturer reportedly in February dumped Microsoft (MSFT) for the mobile maker’s QNX in the next-generation version of its Sync in-car technology system.

On this Ford deal, BlackBerry didn’t have anything to say other than to raise the security issue.

“While we can’t comment on this customer, we understand that there is diversity and choice in the market,” a BlackBerry spokesperson emailed Bloomberg. “Enterprises should think twice about relying on any solution built on the foundation of a consumer technology that lacks the proven security benefits that BlackBerry has always delivered.”