BlackBerry Z10 sold out in India, CEO “surprised” with the feedback
For BlackBerry's make-or-break smartphone, the sales figures are impressive. At least that is what CEO, Thorsten Heins would have us believe.
BlackBerry CEO, Thorsten Heins, has said that the sales of the Z10 smartphone (read our review) have been encouraging. He was speaking at the Communitech Tech Leadership Conference. The BlackBerry Z10 has been labelled as the “make or break” phone for the company, and the first phone on the BlackBerry 10 platform. He declined to give any numbers in terms of sales figures or the number of units shipped. Additionally, he went on to mention that the Z10 is already sold out in India.
“I was surprised when we launched in India how well the Z10, which is a high-end device, sold,” said Heins. “We shipped into the channel product that we thought would have been good for at least five days and I got an emergency call from our manager in India, saying that they were sold out in two days. Now we are scrambling to re-load that channel.”
The Z10 has been launched in 20 countries, including UK, Canada, Germany, Indonesia, India, the United Arab Emirates and South Africa. The company has said that the Z10 launch in the U.S. is due later this month. It would be interesting to see the numbers when the company releases its quarterly report on March 28, 2013.
“The feedback is very encouraging,” Heins said at the Communitech Tech Leadership Conference in the BlackBerry’s hometown of Kitchener-Waterloo. “What has been a real surprise for us is that BlackBerry 10 as a platform and product is attracting users that are currently on other platforms. We are just five weeks into this. We have just one product out in 21 countries, so it is early indications, but we are encouraged by what we see and hear from our carrier partners,” he told an audience of leaders of local technology start-ups.
In a desperate attempt to regain its foothold in the market, the company announced the Z10 smartphone and the new BlackBerry 10 operating system at the end of January 2013. The company had, at that time, also announced the rebranding from Research in Motion to BlackBerry.
While the news of the Z10 smartphone being sold out in India may be surprising for some, we are not a tad bit overwhelmed by it. The reason being simple – most companies now ship limited numbers of the device initially, and hope that they get picked up quickly. If all goes according to plan, the “sold-out” signs across e-commerce websites and even brick and mortar stores create a sort of hype that any company craves for.
This has become a trend, which helps companies create excitement about a product even after the launch. But that is not to take away from the fact that the Z10 has been fairly well received in the countries it has been launched, but the U.S. market response would be the most critical for the company’s future.