UK politicians are widely using the iPad

Mar 25, 2015 12:31 GMT  ·  By

Politicians love electronics and not just any electronics, mind you, but the expensive type of gadgets, obviously.

Members of the parliament in the UK are poised to receive a hardware refresh that will bring into their possession the latest sort of tablets produced by industry giant Apple.

UK politicians are in for a big iPad Air 2 shipment

As reported by Express, the House of Commons Commission has announced that all 650 MPs are going to receive one iPad Air 2 and a laptop (of unknown origins, maybe a MacBook Air?) following the general elections in May.

The acquisition is expected to cost the UK officials around $1.5M / €1.37M, but the paying system entails the delivery of roughly $300,000 / €270,000 per year over a period of five years.

The Parliament has been integrating iPads into current business processes and infrastructure since 2012, so moving away from the iOS ecosystem would incur costs to change these processes.

Even if the report doesn't actually mention what sort of laptops will be given to the MPs, we have to assume we’re still talking about Apple products.

Earlier this month, the Cupertino tech giant rolled out refreshed MacBook Air and MacBook Pro models, while also rolling out a new 12-inch MacBook model with Retina display and a brand new USB Type-C connector port.

A separate report disclosed that the Commons IT department selected for purchase Apple’s 16GB Wi-Fi+ Cellular iPad Air 2 model, which will cost the state $741 / €676 a pop.

Choosing expensive iPads is actually meant to cut costs

We're also told that despite the fact that these devices are considered premium models, the Apple iPad purchase scheme has actually been designed to save money in the Parliament.

It appears that the reduction of hard-copy printing in favor of online documents viewed and edited by virtue of employing the use of Microsoft’s Office 365 is saving more than $4.46 / €4 million annually.

It’s a fortunate affair that Microsoft’s Office suite has been made available for Apple’s iPad host, thus preventing official governmental organizations like the Commons from having to switch to alternate operating systems like Windows.

Even if iPads have been used in the House of Commons since 2012, only 209 MPs currently own such tablets.