Investment giant J.P. Morgan has announced that the firm is no longer handing out free BlackBerry handsets to all of its employees. Starting next year, some of those toiling for the bank will have to shell out their own hard earned cash to buy their own smartphone. The company hopes to save tens of millions of dollars a year by doing this. Those who want to keep their company-issued BlackBerry, will have to pay the monthly invoice for data.

J.P. Morgan is not requiring that those purchasing their own handset buy one with a particular operating system. This new move is just a small part of the bank’s new focus on cutting expenses. According to the Wall Street Journal, the financial institution expects its operating expenses to decline 6% next year to $57.67 billion.

Along with the new smartphone policy, the bank says that some company email will no longer be available to read on a BlackBerry device. This news comes just as BlackBerry is getting ready to unveil its first Android powered handset, the BlackBerry Priv. The slider will provide Android users with a high-level of security (Priv is short for ‘privacy’), the best-in-class physical BlackBerry QWERTY, and a form factor rarely seen these days.

For BlackBerry users, the Priv gives them the security and QWERTY keyboard that they might already be getting from their BlackBerry device, but with access to Google Play services, and all of the top apps.

source: WSJ