According to a Wall Street Journal report, Dell has announced that it plans to move its 25,000 employees off of the BlackBerry platform and on to its own device, the Dell Venue Pro, which runs Windows Phone 7 from Microsoft.
“Clearly in this decision we are competing with RIM, because we’re kicking them out,” the computer maker’s chief financial officer, Brian Gladden, said in an interview.
“We actually had a conversation last night around creating a site on eBay where we can actually sell these BlackBerry devices” that employees return, Mr. Gladden said. He added that he hasn’t told RIM of his plans, adding, “it’s not clear to them the scope of what we’re doing.”
Mark Guibert, RIM’s senior vice president of corporate marketing dismissed the move as a publicity stunt…
“We find it highly unlikely that they will actually save any money with this move and far more likely they were looking for a little free publicity…”
Personally I don’t think that there is any doubt that this is a publicity stunt… When’s the last time you heard of someone buying a phone from Dell? The problem for RIM, however, is that Dell isn’t the only manufacturer coming after the BlackBerry with Windows Phone 7 in the enterprise…
Well, they shouldn’t have any excuses when bugs are found then. Why, they should know before everyone else because it will personally affect them.
It’s interesting they started this with WP7 and not Android. Regardless this is a business decision. It is like a Dell employee carrying a MacBook. MS did 2 things similar.
1. Employees that had non MS mobile phones would not have the dataplan covered IE BlackBerry, iPhone at the time….Android was just getting started.
2. Gave all employees WP7 devices
What I can’t beleive is that RIM dismissed it as a publicity stunt. I am not sure they can afford to do that right now.
Well they probably can’t say what they are really thinking to be honest. I think most companies would say the same/similar. Privately, they may be saying “oh this might be a problem” or “good thing we have ___ coming out soon”, but we would never be told either if they aren’t ready to announce.
Whether RIM can afford to dismiss it or not is for another post, but, Dell announcing that they were going to use their own solution as compared to their biggest competitors via the WSJ, clearly, was a publicity move. Windows Phone 7, the day it was released targeted the enterprise more than Android ever has. To have any credibility behind their Windows Phone 7 devices, Dell had to swap out BlackBerry devices, because not doing so would always leave the objection, “If your stuff is so good, why don’t you use it?”
I am not mad at Dell though… If they can get some buzz out of announcing the inevitable and obvious… More power to ’em.
Try dismissing Citigroup and Bank of America doing the same thing, but reviewing if iPhone can meet the security requirements. The challenge is the continual justification for additional BES Servers. This could snowball into a bigger issue.
Read it yourself
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-05/bank-of-america-citigroup-said-to-test-iphone-as-blackberry-alternative.html
This is in no shape or form a publicity stunt by Dell. As someone who works extensively with Dell on a day-to-day basis, RIM’s “reason” is a stretch. Dell has been using BB’s for the longest time, and it shows if you’ve ever seen what they are carrying. I’m talking about some folks still walking around with some old 7000 series BB’s (mostly Curve’s though from AT&T). It was time for an overhaul, they are entering the phone business, and like Rod said, it would be “like a Dell employee carrying a MacBook.”
As for Win7 (over Android), Dell has a “very” tight relationship with MS and offer high end development solutions to their clients via their MS practice via ICS. To extend the development arena to the phone platform would be a benefit to Dell’s overall solution offering and may as well practice what they preach (and offer).