Marissa Mayer is on the path to being “best CEO ever!” of Yahoo! as she just sent an email to all of Yahoo’s full and part time employees, announcing they would receive a new Apple, Samsung, Nokia, or HTC smartphone. And Yahoo is picking up the tab for the phone, and the service!
“People are happy,” says a source at the company.
We reported a few weeks ago that Ms. Mayer was considering giving every Yahoo employee a new iPhone. It appears she is about to put her plan in motion, and is adding Android and Windows Phone’s into the mix. The phones will be distributed through a program Yahoo calls “Yahoo! Smart Phones, Smart Fun!”
Through the program, Yahoo employees will have a choice of phones: iPhone 5, Samsung Galaxy S3, HTC One X, HTC EVO 4G LTE, or Nokia Lumia 920.
Yahoo is also going to pick up the tab for its employees data and phone bills.
Unfortunately for any Yahoo Blackberry users, they will be SOL (Simply Out of Luck), as the company is going to discontinue IT support for RIM devices.
While you can bet getting sweet new smartphones will bump up the morale in the Yahoo ranks, that’s not the only motive behind the move. According to the memo, Yahoo just wants their employees to be using the same phones that Yahoo users are.
“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.”
While the program will cost Yahoo a little change out of their pocket, it’s going to pay huge dividends by resulting in a workforce that is more informed about how their users use the new devices, and will motivate them to improve the user experience for said users.
The memo:
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 S3
– HTC One X
– HTC EVO 4G LTE
* Windows Phone 8:
– Nokia Lumia 920We’re getting started right away and taking orders starting now.
