I got five or six variants of this question in my inbox after I posted this story on the whole situation. My answer goes something like this. First of all, Rogers does still sell BlackBerry products. Whether they continue to do so is an open question, but they haven’t “dumped” them as such. Also, I can’t blame Rogers for not wanting to carry the Z30. After all, BlackBerry has had trouble selling phones, and Rogers likely didn’t want to take the chance that they would sit on shelves. After all, Rogers is out to make money.
Having said that, I think it could have been handled a bit better by Rogers. This story went from being a business decision to negative press about Rogers not supporting a Canadian company faster than you can blink. And a simple search of Twitter using the terms “Rogers” and “Z30” or for the hashtag “#IchooseBlackBerry10” shows that it hasn’t subsided. Now it’s not Rogers responsibility to support “Canadian” companies. But I think if they’re going make a decision which is likely to generate negative press in the age of social media, they might want to be out front of that. In this case, they weren’t and still aren’t really in front of it. I’m saying that because of what I’m reading at the moment:
Rogers president Rob Bruce said he was surprised and perplexed by the reaction, but that the company wouldn’t change its decision.
I’m not sure why they would be surprised by this as it was entirely predictable. You see, Rogers has had a long history with BlackBerry being one of the first carriers in Canada to have the device and more recently hosted the Canadian launch of BB10 with BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins. So when they decide not to carry a BlackBerry device, people who are aware of Rogers long relationship with BlackBerry see that as a negative and the Twitterverse explodes as a result. So for them to be “surprised and perplexed” by this reaction blows me away.
Back to the question at hand. What do I think of this? Rogers made a business decision. But they executed it poorly from a PR standpoint. We’ll have to stay tuned to see if it has any lasting effects.
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This entry was posted on October 4, 2013 at 9:54 am and is filed under Commentary with tags BlackBerry, Rogers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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Hey IT Nerd? What Do You Think About Rogers Dumping BlackBerry?
I got five or six variants of this question in my inbox after I posted this story on the whole situation. My answer goes something like this. First of all, Rogers does still sell BlackBerry products. Whether they continue to do so is an open question, but they haven’t “dumped” them as such. Also, I can’t blame Rogers for not wanting to carry the Z30. After all, BlackBerry has had trouble selling phones, and Rogers likely didn’t want to take the chance that they would sit on shelves. After all, Rogers is out to make money.
Having said that, I think it could have been handled a bit better by Rogers. This story went from being a business decision to negative press about Rogers not supporting a Canadian company faster than you can blink. And a simple search of Twitter using the terms “Rogers” and “Z30” or for the hashtag “#IchooseBlackBerry10” shows that it hasn’t subsided. Now it’s not Rogers responsibility to support “Canadian” companies. But I think if they’re going make a decision which is likely to generate negative press in the age of social media, they might want to be out front of that. In this case, they weren’t and still aren’t really in front of it. I’m saying that because of what I’m reading at the moment:
Rogers president Rob Bruce said he was surprised and perplexed by the reaction, but that the company wouldn’t change its decision.
I’m not sure why they would be surprised by this as it was entirely predictable. You see, Rogers has had a long history with BlackBerry being one of the first carriers in Canada to have the device and more recently hosted the Canadian launch of BB10 with BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins. So when they decide not to carry a BlackBerry device, people who are aware of Rogers long relationship with BlackBerry see that as a negative and the Twitterverse explodes as a result. So for them to be “surprised and perplexed” by this reaction blows me away.
Back to the question at hand. What do I think of this? Rogers made a business decision. But they executed it poorly from a PR standpoint. We’ll have to stay tuned to see if it has any lasting effects.
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This entry was posted on October 4, 2013 at 9:54 am and is filed under Commentary with tags BlackBerry, Rogers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.