Attention! Attention! All you Blackberry lovers out there. That includes me, myself, and I. Blackberry is giving away the kitchen sink from its headquarters in Waterloo, Ontario if you’ll trade in your iPhone and switch back to the good life of a keyboard and non-existent apps during this extended celebration known as Cyber Monday.
Yesterday Blackberry released its new phone called the Blackberry Passport and it is a beauty. Seriously, I want it now. As Blackberry’s only customer, I was hoping they would send me one for free. Basically, they are as I get hundreds of dollars for turning over my retired iPhone 4S. So is this Blackberry’s idea of a Cyber Monday promotion? If so then once again they have failed to drum up support since a) nobody knew about it or b) nobody cared about it.
I warned Blackberry years ago in a candid letter that their company would face a downward spiral if they did not heed my advice. They did not. Now, they meekly have introduced another device at the worst time and in the worst way. While I agree with the strategy of giving away the phone for free so doubters can see its greatness (a strategy effectively implemented by T-Mobile to gain subscribers), I do not agree with the timing and the nonexistent promotion.
How can they give away the phone for free? Simple, these phones cost next to nothing to produce. (See Foxconn’s working conditions and wages for workers who produce the iPhone.) But why on the day that everyone else is giving everything for free would Blackberry try the same thing?
Because they are stupid. Their last phone release came right around Christmas when everyone already had their Turbo Man iPhone nestled safely under their tree. This time they thought they’d get a jump on those holiday shoppers by releasing it on the busiest e-commerce shopping day of the year. Dear Blackberry, users who recently purchased the iPhone 6 are too hypnotized by their 12″ screens (something that Apple users swore they would never want) to care for a free Blackberry.
Blackberry, a Canadien company, was hoping that Cyber Monday would trigger a metaphorical Boxing Day where shoppers would fight to get their hands on this latest device. Instead, I predict executives of Blackberry will awaken to the second coming of Black Tuesday, resulting in what may be an unrecoverable descent in their stock.
Why Blackberry why?
Seems like a good deal but the trade in site seems to only list Canadian iPhone 4s’s. In fact most of the phones listed are for the Canadian model.
Really! If that’s the case they are truly idiots.