by Muyiwa Matuluko

Desperate times call for desperate measures. That has to be BlackBerry CEO, John Chen’s new mantra for 2015.

You know how most developers (indie and corporate alike) tend to build more apps for Android and iOS, blatantly ignoring BlackBerry and Windows Phone? Well John Chen has decided to take a bold step towards righting that wrong.

Apparently he has sent a letter to the US Congress arguing on the need for “App Neutrality” (is that even a thing?) in the mobile space. Basically, John Chen is riding on the Net Neutrality bandwagon to push for similar policies in the app ecosystem.

Excerpts form the letter:

BlackBerry has been in the midst of a turnaround since I took over as Executive Chairman and CEO in November 2013. During the past 15 months the company has stabilized and introduced a variety of new products as we pivot away from our prior reliance on hardware to become a full-service, device-agnostic provider of highly secure and productive software and services. Our balance sheet is strong and our turnaround is proceeding apace.

Key to BlackBerry’s turnaround has been a strategy of application and content neutrality. For example, we opened up our proprietary BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) service in 2013, making it available for download on our competitors’ devices.

Unfortunately, not all content and applications providers have embraced openness and neutrality. Unlike BlackBerry, which allows iPhone users to download and use our BBM service, Apple does not allow BlackBerry or Android users to download Apple’s iMessage messaging service. Netflix, which has forcefully advocated for carrier neutrality, has discriminated against BlackBerry customers by refusing to make its streaming movie service available to them. Many other applications providers similarly offer service only to iPhone and Android users. This dynamic has created a two-tiered wireless broadband ecosystem, in which iPhone and Android users are able to access far more content and applications than customers using devices running other operating systems. These are precisely the sort of discriminatory practices that neutrality advocates have criticized at the carrier level.

Therefore, neutrality must be mandated at the application and content layer if we truly want a free, open and non-discriminatory internet

TL;DR – Uncle Chen wants to force Apple, Google and independent developers to make apps for the BlackBerry platform.

What Chen fails to understand is that, while Apple and Google might be guilty as charged for ignoring competing platforms, app neutrality is quite impractical for most independent developers out there, for whom developing for multiple platforms can be a financial and project management nightmare. App neutrality might seem fair to BlackBerry but it’s not in anyway fair to that small startup building Android apps in their bedroom.

Nevertheless, we wish John Chen and BlackBerry good luck in this endeavour. They might be on to something here.

Read the full letter here.