BlackBerry’s new Z10 smart phone was released for sale in the U.S. on Friday, almost two months after its debut in other countries, putting the company’s turnaround plan to the test in its largest market.
Research In Motion Ltd.’s Chief Executive Officer Thorsten Heins kicked off U.S. sales of the touch-screen device Thursday night at a theater in New York’s Times Square. The event, which featured performances by rapper Ludacris and R&B singer Janelle Monae, marked the arrival of the Z10 at AT&T Inc. stores. The phone will be offered by Verizon Wireless on Thursday.
A lot of hard work has resulted in the “culmination of selling a fantastic device in the U.S.” Heins told those gathered at the Best Buy Theater.
Heins is trying to reverse BlackBerry’s fortunes in the U.S., where the onetime smartphone leader has lost ground to Apple Inc.’s iPhone and Google Inc.’s Android-based devices. Sales in the country fell by almost half to $520 million in the third quarter from a year earlier, though the U.S. still accounts for about one-fifth of revenue for Waterloo, Ontario-based BlackBerry.
“There’s no risk of overstating the importance of the U.S. for BlackBerry,” said Ramon Llamas, an analyst with IDC in Framingham, Mass. “It’s such an important bellwether market.”
AT&T, the second-largest U.S. carrier, will offer the Z10 for $199.99 on a two-year contract, putting it at the same price level as the main iPhone. The phone was unveiled on Jan. 30, and it’s been available for weeks in the U.K., Canada and other markets. Heins has attributed the U.S. delay to the longer equipment-testing procedures of American carriers.
At an AT&T store in midtown Manhattan on Friday morning, there were no iPhone-style lines of shoppers waiting for the new BlackBerry. Most buyers of the phone will probably be corporate customers, rather than consumers, said Jorge Garcia, a sales representative at the shop on Lexington Avenue.
“Most of the corporate clients are asking for BlackBerrys,” said Garcia, who expects about 90 percent of the new phone’s sales to come from those customers, with 10 percent coming from walk-in shoppers.
Verizon Wireless, the nation’s biggest carrier, has begun taking orders for the Z10 ahead of making it available in stores next week. Sprint Nextel Corp., No. 3 in the market, won’t sell the Z10 at all. It’s waiting to offer the Q10, a version with a smaller screen and physical keyboard that’s coming out later this year.
Information for this article was contributed by Karl Baker of Bloomberg News.
Business, Pages 29 on 03/23/2013