NYPD scrapping 36K Nokia-made Windows phones given to staff in last two years as part of $160M program, will replace with iPhones by end of year
The NYPD has to scrap the 36,000 smartphones it gave cops over the past two years because they're already obsolete and can't be upgraded, The Post has learned.
Context & Ripple Effects
The NYPD's $160M smartphone program was built on Windows handsets just as Microsoft's mobile platform was collapsing, leaving the department holding 36,000 devices that are already obsolete and cannot be upgraded. The swap to iPhones lands mid-retreat: the same platform choice that stranded the fleet is what forces the replacement.
The iPhone pivot turned out to be foundational rather than one-off — within three years the department had moved core patrol work onto the device, including replacing the century-old handwritten memo book with an iPhone app, making the 2017 hardware decision the entry point for a much deeper operational dependency.
First-order effects
- Roughly 36,000 officers swap devices by year-end, with much of the $160M program's handset spend written off after only two years of service.
- Microsoft and Nokia lose a high-visibility public-safety deployment, and the NYPD's procurement team absorbs the cost of re-imaging an entire fleet onto iOS.
Second-order effects
- Vendors bidding on large government mobile contracts now face a support-longevity test the NYPD's write-off makes concrete — OS roadmap risk becomes a scored procurement criterion alongside price.
- Apple gains a marquee municipal reference deployment at scale, strengthening its position against Android rivals for law-enforcement and enterprise fleet deals.
Third-order effects
- Once a department standardizes on iPhones, workflows and tooling accrete around them — the memo-book app shows patrol process itself migrating into the device, raising switching costs for any future platform change.
- Standardizing tens of thousands of officers on iOS also concentrates forensic access questions on one ecosystem, the terrain later mapped by reporting that NYC police have held tools since 2018 to unlock and extract data from iOS devices.
The trend: Public-safety mobility is consolidating onto iOS as Windows exits phones, with police departments building durable workflows and forensic dependencies on whichever platform they standardize on.