BlackBerry Ends Ties with T-Mobile in United States, Apparently Miffed by Apple iPhone 5S Campaign
BlackBerry is apparently pretty miffed by T-Mobile's Apple iPhone 5S campaign as the Canadian smartphone company now decided to end its U.S. collaboration with the carrier. This means that T-Mobile will not be allowed to work with BlackBerry phones in the U.S.
The company announced that it had no willingness to renew the license with T-Mobile that is going to have its on-going license expired on April 25, 2014. Post expiry, T-Mobile will not offer BlackBerry devices on the U.S. network of the company which is a part of Deutsche Telekom.
John Chen, the chief executive of BlackBerry, said that the companies were no longer holding "complementary" strategies. Mr Chen, on the other hand, expressed willingness to work with T-Mobile once again. The collaboration, however, will only take place if the commercial strategies of both the companies complement each other.
One may wonder if BlackBerry's decision of not renewing the contract with T-Mobile has something to do with the latter's February campaign. T-Mobile launched a campaign earlier in February, which apparently discouraged BlackBerry users to use the mobile device anymore and asked them to switch to Apple iPhone 5S. BlackBerry devotees were, for obvious reasons, not happy about the campaign at all.
BlackBerry, nevertheless, will make sure that the present users get uninterrupted support even after the license expires on April 25. The decision to end ties with T-Mobile is not going to affect those who are already using BlackBerry devices on T-Mobile network. Nor will it affect users from other countries. The decision to end ties is applicable only to U.S. customers.
Mr Chen said that his company had a "positive relationship" with the network for several years. However, he said that it would not work in the "best interest" of their customers if they continued to have collaboration with T-Mobile. He said that the company was "deeply grateful" to loyal customers of BlackBerry devices. He said that the company would "do anything" to ensure a "smooth transition" to other carrier partners of the company.