“Launching new products is always difficult,” Jonathan S. Geller reports for BGR. “Launching new products with hundreds of different carriers is exponentially more difficult.”
“Apparently there is an easy way and a hard way to do things, however, and RIM has been making carriers offers they can’t refuse,” Geller reports. “BGR has learned from a trusted source that RIM has been strong-arming several carriers, essentially forcing them to approve devices they normally would not move through the Technical Acceptance phase.”
Geller reports, “We have been informed by a very reliable source at a major carrier that RIM has been putting an enormous amount of pressure on carriers to approve the upcoming BlackBerry smartphones like the BlackBerry Bold 9900 — phones that have to hold RIM over until its next-generation platform launch in 2012 — and that certain carriers will be approving the devices, ‘no matter what — with bugs and problems.’ … It’s one of the reasons some carriers launch devices sooner than others.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: DCW RIM’s death throes, we understand, but, if this report is true, what’s in it for the carriers? Pissing off customers with half-baked devices that are more likely to be returned seems like bad business. Perhaps some carriers figure their customers will simply give them a pass and blame the device maker when they return their buggy BlackBerry for the iPhone they really wanted? All of the carriers ought to tell the RIM zombie to drop dead.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Phil O.” for the heads up.]