14 DAY TRIAL // Even though we can agree that BlackBerry Passport is definitely a major success for the Canadian company, things could have been much better if more money had been invested into marketing.
Still, given BlackBerry’s tough financial situation, lots of cuts have been made in order to save money, so the budget for the Passport’s launch must have been very low.
The Passport is a hard-to-come-by smartphone that BlackBerry launched several weeks ago. The company is expected to release another device in less than two weeks, the BlackBerry Classic.
The Classic and Passport may or may not be similarly successful in terms of sales, but there’s one thing that seems to be clear and that’s the fact that BlackBerry’s issue and the reasons for which it did not sell several million of Passport units by now has nothing to do with the quality of its smartphones.
Business Insider journalist Mike Bird recently decided to purchase the BlackBerry Passport over Samsung Galaxy Note 4 or iPhone 6 Plus.
There’s nothing wrong here, but in order to do that Mike had to go to a retail store to purchase the BlackBerry Passport. To his surprise, the sales person in the store wasn’t even sure that the BlackBerry Passport was still in stock.
And the weird things don’t stop here as the shop’s employee asked Mike whether he had been forced into purchasing a BlackBerry smartphone, because if not, maybe he would want to take into consideration getting the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 or iPhone 6 Plus.
Hopefully, BlackBerry will invest more in the future in educating sales people before launching a high-end smartphone
Perhaps the example is not really relevant for Passport’s popularity given the fact that, by the look of things, Mike Bird was one of the few asking to see the smartphone, but BlackBerry is really selling its high-end smartphone very well in most countries.
Unfortunately, Mike’s experience while shopping for a BlackBerry Passport is not unique to a retailer or a country. The fact that sales people aren’t trained at all to recommend the BlackBerry Passport to potential customers is definitely hurting the Canadian company’s business.
What’s more is that carriers reps and retailers sales representatives are trying to push the competition’s devices to customers who come asking for BlackBerry Passport, which is even worse than not knowing anything about the device.
Even though the Passport could be the perfect business phone for some, the fact that the smartphone isn’t supported by local retailers and carriers due to the BlackBerry brand’s damaged reputation means that the Canadian company will never be up for a comeback in the big league.
