BlackBerry Woos iPhone Users with Trade-In Cash Offer
BlackBerry is going head-to-head against Apple this holiday season with a new promotion offering iPhone owners cash to trade in their smartphone in exchange for a new Passport unit.
BlackBerry (BBRY) is going head-to-head against Apple (AAPL) this holiday season with a new promotion offering iPhone owners cash to trade in their smartphone in exchange for a new Passport unit.
Under the BlackBerry Passport Trade-Up Program, which begins Dec. 1 and runs through Feb. 13, 2015, iPhone users can swap their smartphone for a BlackBerry Passport and receive up to $400 trade-in value and an additional $150, delivered as a lump sum on a Visa gift card from BlackBerry. The promotion only is available in North America.
Apple iPhone models eligible for the deal include the 4S, 5, 5C, 5S and 6. BlackBerry is providing iPhone owners with estimates on the value of their smartphones at a special website, with the trade-in value for the iPhone 4S pegged at up to $90, the 5 at $150, the 5C at $130, the 5S at $235 and the 6 at $400.
Shoppers must purchase the BlackBerry Passports either at the vendor’s website or through Amazon (AMZN) to qualify for the promotion.
An additional Black Friday campaign, which began Nov. 22 and will run for a limited time, includes discounts on the Passport and BlackBerry Z30 smartphones and special financing offers. In that promotion, BlackBerry is offering customers $100 off the purchase value of a black colored Passport model, effectively lowering the price of the unit to $499 for models bought at BlackBerry’s website or at Amazon. BlackBerry also is offering $275 off MSRP on the Z30 if the unit is purchased at the company’s shopping website.
BlackBerry has made available special financing options through PayPal featuring interest-free payments for six months on purchases of $200 or more.
The company unwrapped its business-centric Passport device in late September and almost immediately saw product demand exceed supply as the device garnered some 200,000 in pre-orders and sold out on the vendor’s website and on Amazon.
The Passport features touch-sensitive keys on a physical keyboard, runs the BlackBerry 10 mobile OS on a quad-core Qualcomm (QCOM) Snapdragon 801 processor, and includes 3GB of RAM, 32GB of on-board memory, a 13-megapixel rear-facing camera and 30 hours of battery life.
