Heins: Strong BlackBerry Z10 sales will influence decision on what to do with the company

BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins says that the strong sales of the BlackBerry Z10 are affecting the ongoing review of the company. Heins told German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine that the success of the first BlackBerry 10 model has changed the tone of the discussions and the decision of what to do with the company "could perhaps go in a different direction." Among some of the options that Heins and the Board are looking at is a complete sale of the company, licensing the software, or selling the hardware end of the business. Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak recently predicted that BlackBerry would end up using the Android OS combined with BlackBerry's strong hardware.

There have been conflicting stories abut how well the BlackBerry Z10 has been doing. Both U.K. and Canadian carriers and retailers have called the launch a success, while some investment analysts have said that the whole thing was a ruse with BlackBerry giving retailers a small number of units to sell to guarantee a sellout and to start a buzz. We should point out that many of the analysts who have called the sellout of the BlackBerry Z10 bogus, have been negative on the stock for months.

Meanwhile, CEO Heins said that he gets different information than others, and he says that sales have exceeded BlackBerry's expectations. He added that the Canadian company wants to wait a little before releasing numbers. And for those who had reduced the importance of the Z-10 selling out because it was due to low supply rather than heavy demand, Heins says that the company was surprised by the "positive response" and is now ratcheting up supplies, increasing production capacity although he refused to say the amount that capacity was raised. He did say that a high proportion of BlackBerry Z10 units were being purchased by new BlackBerry buyers,coming over from the Apple iPhone and Android. You can't ask for better than that if you're Thorsten Heins.
 
Heins also added that BlackBerry World, which had 70,000 apps at the time the BlackBerry Z10 launched in the U.K., will have 100,000 apps by mid March when the device could launch in the U.S. The CEO said in the past that he expected BlackBerry to battle with Windows Phone over third place in the U.S. With that in mind, Heins said that Nokia's latest Windows Phone models were "not bad," but that they did not have a feature like BlackBerry Hub, and they did not have a way to separate the phone for work and play like BlackBerry Balance can.


source: FranfurterAllgemeine (translated) via eWeek