T-Mobile ran a promo last month calling for BlackBerry owners to trade in their devices for an iPhone 5s. Zero down. It was legitimately a good deal. But BlackBerry fanboys took the offensive and attacked. BlackBerry’s CEO followed suit and went on to call T-Mobile’s promotion “inappropriate” and an “ill-conceived marketing promotion.”
Well, it looks like T-Mobile’s promotion was an overwhelming success and BlackBerry owners dumped their devices en masse.
According to a leaked internal T-Mobile memo, during the promo, the wireless carrier saw a 15x increase in BlackBerry trade-ins with 94% opting for a non-BlackBerry device. And that’s after T-Mobile modified the program to allow BlackBerry owners to upgrade to a new BlackBerry.
The specific number of trade-ins was not reported.
Expect more moves like this from T-Mobile. As the bottom of the leaked memo states, “If this is what the customers want, this is what customers will get!”
T-Mobile wisely targeted a demographic largely left behind in the smartphone wars. The promo was snarky and brash, but clearly effective. The wireless carrier understands its customers. It’s not like T-Mobile offered to take iPhone trade-ins for BlackBerry devices. That would just be silly.
Source: techcrunch.com
