BlackBerry launches Q10 for Rs 44,990

BlackBerry launches Q10 for Rs 44,990

BlackBerry on Thursday, launched its latest smartphone with a physical QWERTY keyboard — Q10 in India at Rs 44,990 hoping to regain its market share in the world’s second largest population that consumes about 17-18 million smartphones every year.
Q10, which comes with a touch screen along with the QWERTY keyboard in BB10 operating software, is priced above its previous product Z10 that was launched at Rs 43,490 in February.

Q10 becomes the second costliest product from the Canadian smartphone maker, after P9981 that costs about Rs 1,39,000.
According to the company, Q20 will be available across 20 cities in India starting this Friday.

“There are buyers in every price segment,” said Sunil Lalvani, managing director, Blackberry India. Z10 is for people who love touch screen and Q10 is for the people who love keyboards, he added.

While Blackberry has launched Q10 keeping in mind the loyal Blackberry users who are hooked to keyboards, many of them might have already switched to Z10 in the past few months. So, they may not want to change the handset so soon.
Q10 comes with a 3.1-inch touch screen with 16 gigabytes of internal storage. It also supports the fourth generation (4G) networks and runs on BlackBerry 10 operating system. It also has an 8 megapixel camera and the device has high-definition (HD) video recording facility.

The device reportedly claims to have 14.8 days of standby time on 3G networks and it gives 13.5 hours of battery life as talk time.

According to recent reports, Blackberry has shipped 5.7 million handsets to India during the first quarter this year, an increase of 64 per cent from the corresponding quarter last year. India is one of the fastest growing markets for mobile handsets globally.
Interestingly, Panasonic has also launched its first smartphone P51 in India in May and Samsung launched Galaxy S4 in April. Also, Chinese handset maker Lenovo has launched a few smartphones in India on Wednesday.

While Samsung, Nokia and even Apple have increased their market share substantially in the past few years in India, Blackberry has witnessed a steady decline in India to 7.5 per cent.

Countdown starts for Q5

With Q10 made available to public, the wait now starts for Blackberry’s next device — Q5 which is expected to be priced much lower.

“Q5 will be a perfect product for India market. The price is yet to be firmed up. But, it will be affordable targeted at the youth segment. The device is expected to be in market in the next three months,” said Lalvani.

AS the company positions as a priority market, Blackberry will continue to sell its earlier models which run on BB7 platform. “We will cater every segment. But certainly not targeting the entry-level smartphone segment,” he added.

Meanwhile, to push sales, the company has started offering equated monthly instalment schemes and exchange offers in India.
“Our aim was to bring down the cost of ownership. So, we lowered data plan tariffs from Rs 299 to Rs 129 a month for 15 circles with Aircel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular, for full BlackBerry experience. It will be taken pan India soon,” said Lalvani, adding that the company has been going through a transition in the past one year.

“We have introduced BB10 as a platform with the launch of Z10. Now there is Q10. Q5 is coming up. Now, it’s the phase of execution,” he added.