Dell declared war on RIM, chucks all its own Blackberries on eBay, replaces then with Venue Pros

In  a rather dramatic move, Dell has announced next week it will start moving all 25,000 of its employees away from Blackberries and onto their own smartphones, mainly the Dell Venue Pro.

The company had apparently been working for some time with Microsoft planning the move, expects to save 25% of their mobile communication costs by doing so, mainly by getting rid of RIM’s expensive servers.

Soon after Dell is planning to take its campaign on the road, aggressively marketing their mobile hardware and services to other companies.

"Clearly in this decision we are competing with RIM, because we’re kicking them out," the computer maker’s chief financial officer, Brian Gladden, said in an interview.

"We actually had a conversation last night around creating a site on eBay where we can actually sell these BlackBerry devices" that employees return, Mr. Gladden said.

In many ways the move was unexpected, as Microsoft’s new OS focuses mainly on consumers.

Paul Bryan, Microsoft’s senior director for product management for Windows Phone 7, said "We want our phones to be appealing to individuals, and people have needs that span personal and work,"

RIM, who with falling market share has been looking increasingly vulnerable, was unavailable to comment.

Read more at Wall Street Journal here.