BlackBerry’s Managing Director for Europe says they will not Produce Low-Priced BB10 Phones for a While


By: Jeff Stewart  |   February 15th, 2013   |   Business, News, O Canada, Smartphones

After unveiling its latest BlackBerry 10 platform on January 3th, BlackBerry launched its all-touch flagship smartphone Z10 on February 5th both in the United Kingdom and Canada. The response of customers was overwhelming, as BlackBerry announced that it has never sold so many units of its phones on any of its handsets launch date. BlackBerry Z10 managed to make this history in spite of the fact that it is a high-end device just like iPhone for Apple and premium Android offerings of South Korean manufacturer, Samsung. These two companies have proved that high-end devices have a good demand, but the mobile device market also has great demand for low-priced phones as well.

 

Therefore, after the launch of Z10 every BlackBerry fan is now looking at the Canadian company to announce a low-price smartphone just as it did in the past, but so far the Waterloo-based company has not hinted anything about this category. Although, BlackBerry has announced another flagship smartphone along with Z10 that is called Q10 and will be made available for sale across the globe in April. This new device is slightly different than the Z10, as it bears the famous QWERTY keyboard of BlackBerry and at the same time it also offers a small touch screen. However, the rest of the functions, along with quality, performance and operating system is similar to the all-touch Z10 phone.

 

Still the Q10 will not satisfy the low-priced category of users therefore requiring BlackBerry to eventually shed some light on this matter. As the MD of BlackBerry for Europe, Stephen Bates had told TechRadar that his company is currently focused on making sure that customers around the world should primarily perceive BlackBerry as a high-end organization.

 

In his conversation with the news site, Bates said that, “We’ve brought out these high-end devices as a as a statement of intent—to demonstrate vividly the new BlackBerry. Our intention is to evolve that portfolio to enter the mid-tier. But we don’t see us getting to the entry level tier for some time; certainly not this year. Based on the great sales we’ve had over Christmas in the UK there is a demand for the entry level BlackBerry and we don’t want to give that up so we’re going to continue with Curve and the entry level as we bring BlackBerry 10 down through the mid-tier and eventually into the entry level.”

 

Therefore, BlackBerry fans should expect some mid-range BB10 smartphones from the company during 2012, but nothing in the low-priced category until next year.

 

Source: TechVibes

Photo: NFCWorld

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