According to a Business Insider report, Yahoo's new CEO Marissa Mayer has told the employees in a recent memo that the company is coming up with a new program, under which they will be given a new smartphone of their choice --- an Apple, Samsung, Nokia, or HTC device.

The memo, as published by Business Insider, went thus: "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."

While the new program will enable the Yahoo employees to own the latest and most-sought-after smartphones - including Apple's iPhone 5, Samsung's Galaxy S3, Nokia's Lumia 920 or HTC's Evo 4G LTE -, one of the notable omissions by Yahoo is Research In Motion (RIM)'s BlackBerry handset which was once considered the leading device for corporate use.

With Yahoo also announcing that the `free phone' offer will include the payment of employees' voice and data bills by the company, the fact that BlackBerry handsets have been left out of the offer will come as a disappointment to the RIM.

Although the new `free phone' program will give a much-needed boost to the morale of Yahoo employees, the omission of BlackBerry from the list will apparently offend the RIM executives, especially since the company has been steadily losing smartphone market share to the iPhone and numerous Android-based smartphones.