It appears that being labelled “dishonest” is becoming a regular occurrence for Dell.The company, who has been fined hundreds of millions of dollars this year for their corrupt business practices, has once again been called “dishonest” this time by a senior executive of Blackberry phone maker Research In Motion.
His comments came after Dell said that they were set to drop the BlackBerry Smartphone for phones running the Windows Phone 7, OS. RIM hit back calling Dell’s actions “dishonest”.
Senior Corporate Marketing VP Mark Guibert said that the switch to the Venue Pro was a publicity stunt and dismissed Dell’s claim that it would save as much as 25 percent in mobile costs by dropping the expenses of running BlackBerry Enterprise Server hardware.
Guibert claimed that the lack of BlackBerry data compression and the cost of buying the phones would negate much of the cost advantage, he suggested that Dell could have gotten by on the limited but free BlackBerry Enterprise Server Express, which still handles the Exchange services Dell would need.
“We find it highly unlikely that they will actually save any money with this move and far more likely they were looking for a little free publicity,” Guibert said.
The dishonest label is not new for Dell. Earlier this year Dell shareholders moved to dump Michael Dell as chairman of the company, after he openly condoned the payment of bribes by Intel which resulted in US$100 million in fines for the company. Dell is also facing legal action over 11.8 Million faulty PCs.
Since January, Michael Dell has been forced to pay a personal fine of $4M following the exposure of rampant corruption in the company, which at one stage saw its balance sheet propped up by $720 Million in bribery payments.
Dell, who has several major contracts with the New South Wales Government, including one to provide support for AV equipment in NSW schools, is also facing legal action after being accused of openly hiding 11.8 million faulty PCs.
According to several analysts RIM’s expertise in push-based, secure e-mail has lost effectiveness within the past year as tighter safeguards and better corporate support from Apple and Google have left companies experimenting with other platforms and workers pressuring their employers to let them use the personal devices they would prefer.
Microsoft has been pursuing the same route as Apple and Google with Windows Phone 7 and designed it to have much stronger media and social networking features even as it kept Exchange and other corporate features intact.
