Owlet receives clearance to sell its baby monitoring tech in the EU
Dream Sock is an over the county monitor offering live health readings and notifications for infants
Read more...Relations between BlackBerry and T-Mobile have been strained for a while now, ever since T-Mobile dropped BlackBerry from its stores and then began offering a promotion for users to trade their BlackBerrys in for an iPhone.
I'd imagine that neither move made BlackBerry very happy. Now, finally, they have a chance to do something about it. Namely, to kick T-Mobile to the curb.
BlackBerry announced on Wednesday that it would not be renewing T-Mobile's license to sell BlackBerry products when it expires on April 25th.
“BlackBerry has had a positive relationship with T-Mobile for many years. Regretfully, at this time, our strategies are not complementary and we must act in the best interest of our BlackBerry customers. We hope to work with T-Mobile again in the future when our business strategies are aligned,” BlackBerry CEO and Executive Chair, John Chen, said in a statement.
“We are deeply grateful to our loyal BlackBerry customers and will do everything in our power to provide continued support with your existing carrier or ensure a smooth transition to our other carrier partners."
If you're a BlackBerry customer on the T-Mobile network, you are probably not feeling too happy right now, but BlackBerry says that it will still work with T-Mobile to make sure that any existing customers, or anyone who buys a BlackBerry from T-Mobile's inventory will still be provided with "the best possible customer service."
BlackBerry did not elaborate further about why it made this decision, but a blog post from Chen in February, following T-Mobile's "swap your phone" idea, should shed some light.
Chen called the move an "anti-BlackBerry campaign," and said that he was "outraged" at what T-Mobile had done.
"What puzzles me more is that T-Mobile did not speak with us before or after they launched this clearly inappropriate and ill-conceived marketing promotion," he wrote.
Most hurtful, of all, though, must have been how successful the T-Mobile promotion was. Even after T-Mobile, wanting to make some kind of amends, modified the promotion to give BlackBerry users $50 back if they upgraded to another BlackBerry device, a full 94% of those customers switched to other manufacturers.
No wonder BlackBerry has finally had enough.
VatorNews has reached out to T-Mobile for a comment on BlackBerry's decision. We will update if and when we learn more.
(Image source: blogs.psychcentral.com)
Dream Sock is an over the county monitor offering live health readings and notifications for infants
Read more...This round values the company at $2.2 billion
Read more...That gives its customers access to hundreds of PSV databases through a single query
Read more...