14 DAY TRIAL // On Tuesday, Canadian mobile phone maker BlackBerry officially confirmed that it did not plan on continuing its collaboration with wireless carrier T-Mobile starting with the end of this month.
In a press release published yesterday, the company said that it wouldn’t renew its agreement with the wireless carrier when that expired, on April 25 this year.
According to the company, owners of BlackBerry devices on T-Mobile’s network should not be impacted by this, as their service and support should remain the same as they are at the moment.
In fact, the company claims that it will continue to collaborate with T-Mobile to ensure that the best possible customer service will be offered to any BlackBerry user on the carrier’s network.
Moreover, the same will happen to those who will purchase new devices from T-Mobile, given that the wireless carrier still has BlackBerry smartphones in its inventory.
For those out of the loop, we should note that the issues between BlackBerry and T-Mobile started a few months ago, when the wireless carrier decided to no longer sell new smartphones from the Canadian vendor.
However, the operator revised that decision soon after, due to the negative response coming from its users. Still, it appears that the conflict was not actually over.
The handset vendor has also unveiled that it is currently working with other wireless carriers out there to provide users with alternatives in the event that they want to leave T-Mobile and move to another network.
T-Mobile customers who would rather stay with BlackBerry can head over to this page on the company’s website to learn more on what alternatives are available for them.
BlackBerry has been through a series of rough quarters lately and has lost a lot of market share all around the world (it dropped below Windows Phone in Q1 this year), which resulted in some carriers losing trust in its market potential.
T-Mobile is only one of the operators that has decided to lower support for BlackBerry handsets, as Three in the UK and Rogers in Canada made similar moves over the last half a year or so. Others might also follow suit, which will certainly be a huge blow to the vendor.
However, following the recent management reshuffles, BlackBerry appears to be regrouping, in an attempt to get back on track soon. The company is expected to launch a host of new smartphones this year, and it remains to be seen whether they will help it regain market share or not.