Fears of creating a Windows Mobile monoculture that may be more attractive to attackers are superseded by the need for a stable product with familiar characteristics and ties to existing infrastructure, some say.

Chevron PetroChemical, a massive plastics manufacturer based in Houston, is currently in the process of rolling out Motorola and Samsung smartphones running on Windows Mobile because IT project managers feel the company can protect those handhelds more easily than those running on other operating systems.

Jonathan Perret, IT Remote Connectivity analyst at Chevron PetroChemical, a joint venture between parent company Chevron and ConocoPhillipsSP, said that his company has been actively banning its employees from using smartphones and PDAs -- including the popular Research In Motion BlackBerry -- for the last several years.

Despite many requests by individual users to bring their personal BlackBerry devices into the office, the firm waited until it could get in hand Windows Mobile devices that would allow for enforcement of the same types of policies it has created for securing its desktops.

"We knew we would only use Windows Mobile, and we waited for it because it's the platform we felt we could secure most easily and at the lowest cost," Perret said. "This process of adopting smartphones is all about extending your network onto a new platform and addressing the challenges of that platform, and we felt Windows Mobile presented fewer challenges."

The reason why the company banned the use of BlackBerry handhelds was because its IT department wasn't ready to invest in the back-end systems needed to secure the devices, while it felt that Windows Mobile would offer the opportunity to do so with existing infrastructure.

The company is also using a mobile device security package offered by software maker Mobile Armor and provided through carrier Verizon to help keep its smartphones locked down. So far the firm has 130 of the devices distributed to its executives and sales force representatives, with plans to hand out many more.

"Security slowed down previous adoption of PDAs and even our current smartphone deployment because we were waiting for new tools; we were limiting devices because of an inability to secure them," Perret said. "Windows Mobile may not have advanced security features, but we can augment that with third-party applications, and we felt that it presented the best alternative compared to the other [platforms], which would be a lot harder for us to support."