Blackberry CEO Confiscated His Wife's Galaxy Phone

One of the first things John Chen did after becoming chief executive of BlackBerry last year was confiscate his wife’s Samsung Galaxy.
“There were a couple of parties we went to and, when my wife brought out the Samsung, everyone kind of looked at me funny,” he says. “So eventually I said she needed to use a BlackBerry. ‘No, I like my Samsung’, she said, and I told her she was embarrassing me.”

Does she still use it in secret? “That, I wouldn’t know,” he quips. “There might be a lot of secrets I don’t know.”

Initially, she found the new phone difficult to master, an experience that Mr Chen says is shared by many using a BlackBerry for the first time. “It is harder in the beginning, but once you get it, it’s actually quite powerful. It makes other devices look a little toyish.”

He likens the experience to driving his friend’s Lamborghini. “There’s a special sequence but, once you know where all the things are, it blows your mind. Still, because of that, I would never buy a Lamborghini. We too need to make sure the learning curve is not so steep.”