Iphone likely losing in DOD smartphone bid

dodbuzz.com

5 pointsdoron2 comments

The basic problem with iPhones, according to a Boeing source, is that Apple’s produt uses proprietary software. Each app would carry a $200 charge, the Boeing official said, posing what could be a significant costs to the services.

Umm... someone care to explain this? Is that because the DoD is going to hand out a $40m contract to build iPhone apps?

Maybe they're referring to ad-hoc distribution, where you can only assign 100 devices to each developer account. They're testing on 200 iPhones and Androids, possibly more than 100 of which are iPhones, so they would need two developer accounts at $99 / year each.

But, the developer fee covers as many applications on those devices as you want, so the $200 / app figure is still unexplained.

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