Oh Dear..Is it ever a surprise to any of us when a CEO of one company gets insulted by another. Probably not but it might surprise us when one company so blatantly tries to steal the other guys customers to benefit themselves and a preferred partner. Let me shed a bit of light here.

T-Mobile in the USA has been very cheeky indeed when they began contacting their clients with Blackberry devices, offering them a deal to move to an alternate handset. They did this by direct email to Blackberry customers on the T-Mobile network and it seemed that the customers in question were less than pleased. Now maybe there might of been some Blackberry customers on T-Mobile in the USA who received this offer and would of gladly accepted it, to change phones. Particularly given the phone offered was an iPhone 5S. One of the worlds most desirable handsets. However it is still true that the vast majority of Blackberry users are in the business market and as such prefer the Blackberry way. Or they might be a generic user and actually like their original phone, though I personally cannot see why you would go to Blackberry over an iPhone.

BacklashWell it has not exaxtly been friendly for T-Mobile from either the insulted Blackberry CEO or the unimpressed customer base. Social media outlets like Twitter have been used to vent frustration on the topic. It is not hard to see why they got so annoyed, check out the advert that was sent out to Blackberry users on T-Mobile in the USA.

As you can see from this, they are being very pushy and direct with their intentions. Clearly showing how little they think of Blackberry and how high they hold the iPhone 5S. If it was me receiving this and I was not so tied to Apple as I am then I would likely move in exactly the opposite direction to what this advert suggests.

Response from BlackberryAs with all corporate headbutting there will be a response from the aggrieved parties, in this case Blackberry. As predicted on 18/2/14 a response was posted on Blackberry's blog site by their CEO John Chen, which makes for an interesting read. Here are a couple of choice snippets.

I want to thank our loyal customers for your commitment to BlackBerry. By expressing your outrage directly to T-Mobile ‎through tweets, calls and comments in the media and on blog posts, you sent a powerful message that T-Mobile could not ignore. Your partnership with our brand is appreciated by all of us at BlackBerry, and draws a sharp contrast with the behavior of our longtime business partner.

Finally, to T-Mobile, I would like to remind you that our long-standing partnership was once productive and profitable for both BlackBerry and T-Mobile. I hope we can find a way forward that allows us to serve our shared customers once again. Notwithstanding the current challenge, we remain very excited about BlackBerry’s future.

Mr Chen clearly enjoyed writing this and you can find the full piece here. All I have to say to Mr Chen, his company and customers is this, keep your eyes open. Clearly the types of businesses you are dealing with will stop at nothing to distract you. Blackberry does have a great story in it's past and it would be a shame to see it come to a quick end through ignorance of shady practices. It has been a shaky time for Blackberry with an uncertain future ahead of it, failed corporate sale and abandonment of the consumer market cannot be easy rocks to hold. So this insult by T-Mobile will not sit well in the hearts and minds of the powerful Blackberry stakeholders.

My Final ThoughtIt is funny that something as small as an email can start a "cold war" between two large technology firms. Though I guess at the moment the only one to come off poorly in the public eye is T-Mobile. All would agree that this tactic is shady and childish. Let the customers decide on their own, unaided about where to go for their mobile phone needs. Do not provoke the matter by touting a competitors hardware in the face of one of your business partners. This is a sure way to sour any business relationship.