John Legere
John Legere

BlackBerry CEO John Chen started a fight it seems like he couldn’t finish when he attacked T-Mobile for marketing the new iPhone to BlackBerry users.

After Chen called a marketing email T-Mobile sent to BlackBerry users “ill-conceived,” T-Mobile announced that it would offer BlackBerry users a $200 trade-in credit for their old handset to put toward the purchase of a new phone, including an additional $50 in credit if they decided to pick up a new BlackBerry.

The results of that promotion show more bad news for Chen’s company: 94 percent of the BlackBerry users who took advantage of the promotion went on to buy a non-BlackBerry phone, according to an internal T-Mobile memo leaked to TMoNews. While fans of the Canadian smartphone maker took to Twitter to chastize T-Mobile CEO John Legere for the original promotional email the company sent out, it seems like most people want out of their old BlackBerry.

No matter what phone they bought, the trade-in offer has been a success for T-Mobile. A company spokesperson told us that the offer has been incredibly popular, driving a 15-fold increase in the number of BlackBerry trade-ins the company has seen.

It’s another bad sign for BlackBerry, which continues to flounder in the smartphone market. While it once led the business world, the company is losing market share and has seen large clients move toward other manufacturers’ offerings. Even though BlackBerry is working on producing some new handsets, it seems like that may be too little, too late.

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