Response to Blackberry's Recent Open Letter

Dear Blackberry,

I recently received your "Open Letter to Customers".  It saddened me.

I don’t know what you are trying to achieve with emails like this.  I never get stuff like this from Apple or Google or Microsoft – I wonder why?  Even by actually sending the email, without any regard to the content, you are already sending a negative “DAMAGE CONTROL” message.  Personally I believe it just makes the situation worse. 

As to the actual content:  I’ll be honest – I’m not going to read the whole letter.  I don’t have the time, and frankly I’m not that interested.  I have skimmed your section headings and the general impression I get is “uh huh.  More of the same.”  You could sign this email John Chen, Thorsten Heins, or Balsilie/Lazaridis and pretty much accurately represent the same tired old message of decline that they sent out before you. 

If Blackberry is still in as serious denial about the situation as this email seems to indicate, then I’m more than happy to continue outfitting my users with iPhones and Androids, and unless your BES MDM solution is actually free, I’m not interested in it either, thankyou very much.  I already have MDM built in with my Meraki Cloud WLAN solution. 

As a proud and happy Canadian, I am highly predisposed to root for Blackberry, a once-mighty Canadian Tech giant.  But sadly this email indicates to me that we really are seeing another Denial-Demise-of-Nortel repeated in grim detail.

And it makes me sad.

So long, Blackberry.  At this point emails don’t mean anything.  Produce an actual successful product and then we can talk – and that doesn’t mean turning to patent-trolling either.   For goodness' sake, don't do THAT.

I even lined up for your much vaunted BBM-on-iOS app, and have installed it and tried it.  Sadly, it is not very compelling - quite a mess actually.  The much simpler and more visually appealing interfaces of WhatsApp and iMessage keep me coming back, and leaving BBM to whither, unused, on my device.