Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer wants all her employees to be on the same page as its customers and that is why she has decided to offer her staff free smartphones,
Business Insider reports.
All Yahoo employees, both full-time and part time, will be provided with a choice of devices from the
iPhone 5,
Samsung Galaxy S III,
HTC One X and the
Nokia Lumia 920 as part of the company's "Smart Phones, Smart Fun" initiative.
The initiative will be implemented beginning with US employees and is later expected to roll out to 22 countries. Apart from offering new smartphones to employees, the company will also cover the monthly phone and data usage bills for them.
Apparently, the decision for the choice of devices came from the market penetration rates across the globe. With Google's Android and Apple's iOS operating systems currently powering the top smartphones in virtually all markets, it's a no brainer that employees will be offered an iPhone 5, Samsung Galaxy S III, HTC One X or an HTC EVO 4G LTE.
Here's a look at the internal memo that was circulated:
We have a very exciting update to share with you today - we are announcing Yahoo! Smart Phones, Smart Fun! As of today, Yahoo is moving off of blackberries as our corporate phones and on to smartphones in 22 countries. A few weeks ago, we said that we would look into smartphone penetration rates globally and take those rates into account when deciding on corporate phones. Ideally, we'd like our employees to have devices similar to our users, so we can think and work as the majority of our users do.
Moving forward, we'll offer you a choice of devices as well as provide monthly plans for the data and phone. The smartphone choices that we are including in the program are:
Apple iPhone 5
Android:
- Samsung Galaxy S III
- HTC One X
- HTC EVO 4G LTE
Windows Phone 8:
- Nokia Lumia 920
We're getting started right away and taking orders starting now.
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