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“We’re the ones getting the calls from customers.” - BB CEO John Chen retaliates against another “ditch your BlackBerry” offer

By Luis D.

Published: Feb 28, 2014, 5:30 AM

28comments

“We’re the ones getting the calls from customers.” - BB CEO John Chen retaliates against another “ditch your BlackBerry” offer

Since taking the rudder at BlackBerrylast year, John Chen has established himself as a confident,outspoken leader with strict character. He is chiefly seen boastingabout BBM, plotting strategies, unveiling new phones, and arguingwith other CEOs who publicly depreciate the company with theirpractices - intentionally or not. So far, his forthright deliveryhasn't failed to provoke a desired change.

Not long after he made T-Mobile amend its BB-undermining promotion, Chen once again stood up to secure hiscompany's image. This time, it's Good Technology's good-lookin' CEO,Christy Wyatt, that grinds his gears. In January, the enterprisemobility firm began to offer free-with-a-catch migration to itssoftware suite for BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) users. Now, wemight be missing some of the finer details here, but the short recapis that, as BlackBerry's situation looked particularly bleak in theend of 2013, those customers felt that being tied to maintenancecontracts for a "burning platform" wasn't in their bestinterest. Switching to another solution, however, would pile in thecost of early termination fees, in addition to that of the switch.

Christy Wyatt

Another important reason, cited byWyatt at MWC 2014, is BES's inability to manage devices other thanlegacy BlackBerry phones and tablets. This puzzled us quite a bit, asit's a false claim. BES10, which adds support for Android, iOS, andWindows Phone, was announced in early 2013, together with BB10,related phones, and RIM's name change to BlackBerry. Furthermore, atthis year's MWC, the Canadian company introduced BES 12, which coversold and new devices of different platforms. What we're able to deduceso far is that Good Mobility's customers are still running BES5,which is an older, Berries-only solution. And only their IT execsknow why they would opt for a wholly different solution over anupgrade to BES10.

Commenting on Good's migration offer,Mrs. Wyatt expressed good intentions towards serving customerswithout libeling BlackBerry - "This isn't about 'let's kick themwhen they're down'.", she said in an interview. Regardless, herreasoning, along with Good's promotion itself, pretty much came offas a "BlackBerry can't manage other devices, so have oursoftware for free!" proposal. Good's promotion page for contactalso claims that "Good provides the only secure mobilitysolution for iOS, Android and Windows Phone", which is yetanother false claim, as we explained above.

Obviously, John Chen cannot let thecompetition get away with such behavior. Riding high on theannouncements of its new phones and BES12, Chen seized theopportunity, and penned a rebuttal for a blog post, titled "Goodis not Good Enough". “BlackBerry has providedmulti-platform OS management for nearly 2 years now, so let’s putthat to rest." - laconically proclaimed the CEO, before reachingfor the salt-shaker. "Good Technology may talk about 5,000customers but with 30,000 new BES10 servers installed in the pastyear alone, I’d argue that we’re the ones getting the calls fromcustomers.”

John Chen also took a good swing atGood's pricing plan, which offers BES users to migrate for free - butonly until June 30, after which a timed subscription contract comesinto force. Meanwhile, BlackBerry gives its loyal customers free MDM perpetual licenses for BES10 via its EZPass program. “We’re fullytransparent with our customers about what they get from us; our newpricing structure is crystal clear and most importantly, unlike othercompanies, when we say something is free, we mean that it’sfree.” Good sport!

sources: "Goodis not Good Enough" , "We'renot 'trying' to bury BlackBerry" - Good Technology viaBerryReview

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Luis D. has a multitude of news, features and review articles written for PhoneArena. He adeptly demystifies complex technology topics, such as the development of advanced materials for bendable device displays and the evolution of chipset manufacturing.