Following Poor Sales Of Its New Smartphones, BlackBerry Fires Its Head Of US Sales
BlackBerry quietly fired its head of US Sales, Richard Piasentin, last month. — The Wall Street Journal confirmed Piasentin's ouster following BlackBerry's shareholder's meeting yesterday.
Context & Ripple Effects
Richard Piasentin’s exit puts accountability for BlackBerry’s weak U.S. handset sales directly on the sales organization. The move also lands after BlackBerry expanded its secure device-management service to Android and iOS for government and corporate clients.
That cross-platform offering gives BlackBerry an enterprise route beyond selling its own phones, while the reported BBM preloading talks with other handset makers remain unconfirmed.
First-order effects
- BlackBerry must replace its U.S. sales leadership while addressing the poor smartphone sales tied to Piasentin’s departure.
- Government agencies and corporate clients using BlackBerry’s device-management service retain a BlackBerry relationship even when they manage Android and iOS devices.
Second-order effects
- BlackBerry’s U.S. sales team faces pressure to sell enterprise management alongside handsets, rather than relying solely on BlackBerry device deployments.
- Corporate buyers can weigh BlackBerry’s security-management service separately from their choice of employee smartphones, reducing the sales organization’s ability to treat handset adoption as the only entry point.
Third-order effects
- If BlackBerry continues supporting rival mobile platforms, its enterprise business becomes less dependent on clients standardizing on BlackBerry handsets.
- The combination of a sales reset and cross-platform management points toward a vendor model in which security software can outlast loyalty to a single device platform.
The trend: BlackBerry is shifting its enterprise proposition from selling only its own smartphones toward securing and managing mixed-device fleets.