Analysts Reduce Sales Estimates for New BlackBerry Smartphones

By: Zain Nabi  |   May 7th, 2013   |   News, O Canada, Smartphones

Many analysts have reduced their sales estimates for the new BlackBerry smartphones, the Z10 and Q10, saying the Canadian-based smartphone manufacturer will only be able to secure short-term profits and might not be able to post big numbers in the longer run.

 

The move comes owing to a recent decline in sales figures of the Z10 smartphone that was marketed across the globe earlier this year. The Z10 has a virtual keyboard and after receiving mixed response in different market it still took the company to register high profit in the March quarter, but the sales figures from the U.S., where the smartphone reportedly could not attract customers, were not included in the quarterly report.

 

Recently, the Q10 smartphone, the one with physical keyboard, was launched in Canada and the U.K. and the sales figures are also very strong. However, analysts are of the view that the figures are not going to stay the same in the longer run and BlackBerry might fall short of expectations in its second quarter report in which the company will also include the sales figures the Z10 earned in the U.S. markets.

 

Canaccord Genuity analyst Michael Walkley wrote recently about this trend, via Global Post:

 

“Given the weaker Z10 sales levels combined with more limited initial supply of the Q10 than our expectations, we are lowering our BB10 sell-in estimates for the May quarter from 3.3 million to 2.8 million units.”

 

Earlier, Jeffries analyst Peter Misek also cut down his estimates and wrote in a note:

 

“Based on our store checks, the BlackBerry Q10 has been selling extremely well and has been sold out or seeing limited availability in Toronto and across the UK.”

 

The Q10 is still in its launch phase and has been made gradually available in different countries. It was launched recently in Saudi Arabia and it will be seen in the next few weeks how this smartphone shapes the behaviour of different markets. The claims about limited availability were also made in case of the Z10 smartphone when it was reported that all the units had been sold out. Still, BlackBerry was able to post profit in the quarter. It will be interesting to see what happens in the next quarterly report.

 

Photo: Vodafone