BlackBerry (BBRY) CEO Chen 'Outraged' About T-Mobile (TMUS) Comments

BlackBerry (Nasdaq: BBRY) is already having a tough time winning over the U.S. consumer and lack of carrier support won't help out that cause.

That's why CEO John Chen is irate.

Last week, T-Mobile (NYSE: TMUS) sent an email to BlackBerry users, encouraging them to switch to the Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) iPhone 5. BlackBerry then sent several emails and Twitter posts to T-Mobile CEO John Legere, kindly explaining why that was a bad thing to do. Legere posted a few comments on Twitter, apologizing and saying T-Mobile would continue to support BlackBerry.

John Chen posted the following letter to BlackBerry's official website on Tuesday:

Late last week, T-Mobile emailed an offer targeting BlackBerry users on its network asking them to switch their BlackBerry devices to a competitor’s smartphone. As we were never told of their plans in advance, I can only guess that T-Mobile thought its “great offer for BlackBerry customers” would be well received. T-Mobile could not have been more wrong.

I want to thank our loyal customers for your commitment to BlackBerry. By expressing your outrage directly to T-Mobile ?through tweets, calls and comments in the media and on blog posts, you sent a powerful message that T-Mobile could not ignore. Your partnership with our brand is appreciated by all of us at BlackBerry, and draws a sharp contrast with the behavior of our longtime business partner.

I can assure you that we are outraged too. What puzzles me more is that T-Mobile did not speak with us before or after they launched this clearly inappropriate and ill-conceived marketing promotion.

To the BlackBerry user community, I want to extend our deepest gratitude. Y?our passion motivates us every day as we navigate our turnaround. And for our loyal customers on the T-Mobile network, know that we have an offer in the works designed especially for you. Watch this space for an update very soon.

Finally, to T-Mobile, I would like to remind you that our long-standing partnership was once productive and profitable for both BlackBerry and T-Mobile. I hope we can find a way forward that allows us to serve our shared customers once again. Notwithstanding the current challenge, we remain very excited about BlackBerry’s future.

Shares of BlackBerry are flat in early trading Wednesday.

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