BlackBerry's CEO recently met with Obama to convince him not to switch phones
JOE RAEDLE/Getty Images
BlackBerry will do anything to keep you as a user, including sending its top brass to your house. Recently, CEO John Chen traveled to the White House to beg Barack Obama and other high-ranking officials to keep using their devices. He didn't offer any specifics on the meeting besides labeling it as "customer outreach."
Chen said the meeting was about "some of the stuff they like and some of the stuff they would like us to work on." Since taking over as CEO in November, Chen has met with more than 100 clients, but President Obama is without a doubt one of the most high-profile of the bunch.
Whether he likes it or not, Obama is probably stuck with a BlackBerry because its unique security features aren't (yet) present in iPhone or Android devices. To that end, BlackBerry hopes angling its products toward the government will help turn the beleaguered company around.
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Jordan Valinsky is the lead writer for Speed Reads. Before joining The Week, he wrote for New York Observer's tech blog, Betabeat, and tracked the intersection between popular culture and the internet for The Daily Dot. He graduated with a degree in online journalism from Ohio University.
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