When Hyperbole Bites Back
Well, that didn’t take very long.
We were perplexed with the needless hyperbole of Dell’s CFO Brian Gladden when he commented last week that Dell was “kicking out” Blackberry in favor of Dell’s own Venue Pro smartphone running Windows Phone 7.
A simple announcement indicating the replacement would have been entirely appropriate. However, the “kicking out” comment was unnecessary. Those are the kind of comments that come back to “bite” the speaker.
An article published by Infoworld today underlines this point. According to that note, Windows Phone 7 doesn’t support device encryption. This means that Dell may not be able to use its own Venue Pro devices with its Exchange Server corporate email system, …..unless, of course, Dell decides that sending unencrypted corporate email around the world is acceptable.
…..We don’t think it will be acceptable either.
In addition, the new Windows Phone 7 OS only supports DHCP, so if the corporate network is set up for static IP (like many corporate networks), then the device won’t be able to connect to the corporate network via wifi.
Therefore, what can a startup learn from this episode.
Marketing announcements are expected. Hyperbole can come back and bite you.
