BlackBerry has put all their eggs into the BlackBerry Z10 and BlackBerry 10 operating system basket. How dedicated is the company to moving forward as a smartphone manufacturer predominantly? The company formally known as RIM has officially changed their name to BlackBerry, and if that does not give you an idea of the direction the Canadian firm is heading in, nothing will. Positive news for the northern neighbor of the United States has US sales helping drive the early figures of the handset to more than 1.0 million units sold.
Considering the BlackBerry Z10 has only been available for about a week in the US at limited outlets, those numbers are impressive. Many analysts expected BlackBerry to move approximately 900,000 units of the Z10 by this point in time, and by beating that estimate by more than 10%, BlackBerry seems to be headed in the right direction with the new handset. A single commercial order of 1 million BlackBerry Z10 handsets was placed almost immediately after the device launch, but that sale was not included in these numbers.
The BlackBerry Z10 is a stark departure from the typical design of BlackBerries past. As recently as 2007, the RIM BlackBerry ruled the smartphone roost. But that was when the iconic iPhone made its initial appearance, and handsets started to move towards touchscreen displays, and away from physical keyboards. A stubborn RIM continued to keep with the original BlackBerry design which included a small medium resolution screen and physical QWERTY keyboard. That was not the popular trend however, and now Android and iOS powered devices control the vast majority of the smartphone marketplace.
The new BlackBerry Z10 looks nothing like the familiar BlackBerries of old, and delivers a large 4.2 inch touchscreen with extremely high resolution and pixel density. This has evidently helped the company post a surprising fiscal fourth-quarter profit, which has been an eyebrow-raising surprise to many analysts. The BlackBerry Z10 with the new BlackBerry 10 operating system originally launched exclusive to AT&T in the United States. But earlier this week the handset appeared on both T-Mobile and Verizon networks, and the Z10 was launched simultaneously with the BlackBerry Q10.
The Q10 offers a smaller touchscreen display than the Z10, and also returns the familiar physical BlackBerry keyboard. Sales of the Q10 were not reported, and the Z10 numbers included Britain, Canada, the United States and other unnamed markets where the handset sold for approximately a month before hitting North America. With Samsung and Apple smartphones dominating the majority of the mobile handset marketplace, the coveted third place is currently up for grabs. If BlackBerry is going to be successful in returning to relevancy in the smartphone marketplace, this early sales success of their new BlackBerry 10 operating system and BlackBerry Z10 will need to be followed up with ongoing popularity.
You can purchase the Blackberry Z10 at a discounted price tag now starting at $99.99.
