Telecom Lead Asia: BlackBerry Q10, the first BlackBerry 10 smartphone with keyboard, has been priced at Rs 44,990 in India.
The price of BlackBerry Z10, the first smartphone to be unveiled on the BlackBerry 10 operating platform, in India is Rs 43,490.
For comparison, the price of Sony Tablet Z is Rs 42,417 in India.
BlackBerry Q10 will be available in select cities and towns in India from Friday. The phone will also be available from authorized telecom operators as well.
BlackBerry will continue its enterprise strategy as the company is trying to sell BlackBerry Q10 to several enterprises in Indian as well.
Reuters reported that sixty percent of U.S. Fortune 500 companies are already testing or using the system to manage BlackBerry’s new line of devices as U.S. carriers began to roll out its new keyboard-equipped Q10 smartphone.
BlackBerry Q10 is available in two colors — Black and White. This means it may not be a youth oriented phone at present. But there are young professionals in India.
Sunil Lalvani, managing director for India at BlackBerry, said: “BlackBerry Q10 comes with re-engineered physical keyboard and stunning touchscreen display.”
On Thursday, The Times of India said BlackBerry Q10 review: A phone for typing purists.
According to CyberMedia Research, market share of BlackBerry India dipped almost 100 percent to 7.5 percent last year from 14.6 percent in 2011. BlackBerry became the #5 smartphone player last year.
Analysts say costly phones will not assist the company to regain market share in emerging telecom markets. If the company adds more budget phones on the BlackBerry 10 platform, it will regain market share in India and other countries.
On Thursday, The WallStreet Journal reported that BlackBerry’s Q10 could struggle in India.
Last week, Canalys said the outlook for BlackBerry remains positive. Though its market share will remain stable over 2012-2017, in real terms its shipments are expected to more than double. But for this to happen, it needs to phase out BlackBerry 7 devices quickly and add BlackBerry 10 devices across a range of price points. In addition, BlackBerry needs to urgently reverse its fortunes in the US and focus on growing its presence in China, as without these markets it will struggle to hit the projected shipment numbers.
In India, to become the #3 player in smartphone market displacing BlackBerry, Sony Mobile increased its share to 8.2 percent in 2012 from 4.8 percent in 2011, according to CMR India Mobile Handsets Market Review CY 2012. Sony’s new Xperia phones have aided the company to grab market share
The IDC Asia/Pacific Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker data for Q4 2012 says Indian smartphone shipments reached 5.4 million unit shipments, up 38 percent q-o-q. Local vendors ramped up shipments and aggressively launched new models to meet the growing consumer demand in the low-end smartphone market segment.
Manasi Yadav, senior market analyst in the Client Devices team at IDC India, said recently that local vendors have remained dominant in sub-$100 price band while they pose serious competition to the global vendors in the $100-$200 price band. These two segments emerged as the most vibrant and the fastest growing smartphone price band segments in the Indian market.
Baburajan K
editor@telecomlead.com
