January 31, 2013 | Paul Merak | Comments 0

BlackBerry 10 will not start selling in US until March

Blackberry Z10 and Q10

BlackBerry 10 has officially been launched yesterday. New BB10 devices, Blackberry Z10 and Q10 (formerly known as X10) look promising, but we’re not going to be able to buy them in US until March.

Eric Jackson of Ironfire Capital LLC said

“The biggest disappointment was the delay in the U.S., that it will take so long before the devices get going there,”

The first BB10 device, BlackBerry Z10 will hit the shelves in UK tomorrow. From there it will roll out in various countries, but United States is not going to see it until March. When it finally lands in US, it will be picked up by Verizon which will in turn offer it to impatient clients for $199 on 2-year contract. Canadian Rogers offers a 3-year contract as well for $150. In US BlackBerry Z10 will also be available in AT&T and T-Mobile.

BlackBerry Z10 is a button-less all-touch smartphone featuring 4.2-inch touchscreen with 1280×768 pixel resolution and BlackBerry Flow UI. To start it up all you have to do is swipe your finger up the screen. The operating system is BlackBerry 10 QNX OS. The browser is quick and supports Adobe Flash plugin.

Under the hood we have a dual-core 1.5GHz TI OMAP 4470 processor with 2GB of RAM. Z10′s storage starts at 16 GB expandable by up to 32GB via MicroSD card. Among other features let’s mention 1,800mAh removable battery, Micro-SIM, Micro HDMI (to hook up to your new HDTV) and microSD slots, NFC, Bluetooth 4.0, Wi-Fi dual-band 802.11 a/g/n and A-GPS. BB Z10 has rear facing 8MP 1080p camera with LED flash, Geo-tagging, face detection and HDR and a front facing 2MP camera one as well.

BlackBerry Q10 with QWERTY keyboard will not be seen until April. Sprint has announced it will carry it. Q10 sports smaller 3.1-inch capacitive AMOLED touch-screen with 720×720 pixel resolution (330ppi). Other specs seem to be the same as in Z10.

Blackberry holds 3.4 percent of current global smartphone market share, while in US it’s only 2 percent.

The stock price for RIM, now Blackberry is 90 percent down from its shining days in 2008. Blackberry hit the bottom in September last year when the stock price fell down to $6.10 per share. The stock spruced up remarkably to $18.49 last week in anticipation for Blackberry 10 and its new devices. The stock has since fell down to $13.86 per share.

David Pogue of New York Times described BlackBerry Z10 as

“lovely, fast and efficient, bristling with fresh, useful ideas,”

Alicia Keys new creative director of Blackberry standing next to Blackberry’s CEO Thorstein Heins

Alicia Keys has been announced as Blackberry’s global creative director. Grammy award winning singer commented on launch of Blackberry 10 in Manhattan.

“I was in a long-term relationship with BlackBerry, and then I started to notice some new, kind of hotter, attractive, sexier phones at the gym, and I kind of broke up with you for something that had a little more bling, but I always missed the way you organized my life, and the way you were there for me at my job, and so I started to have two phones – I was kind of playing the field. But then … you added a lot more features … and now, we’re exclusively dating again, and I’m very happy.”

Keys will kick off her efforts with this Sunday’s Super Bowl singing the national anthem.

RIM no more! Thorsten Heins announced that RIM is to be referred to as Blackberry. “It is one brand; it is one promise.”

Via reuters

BlackBerry 10 will not start selling in US until March

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