CEO Heins once again says BlackBerry Z10 sales above expectations

BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins has been extremely positive on the launch of the BlackBerry Z10 from the very first launch in the U.K. to the launch in BlackBerry's own backyard, Canada. But there have been those nay-sayers who have said from the start the game was rigged with retailers getting a small number of units in order to guarantee a sell-out.

Following what BlackBerry India called a very successful launch in the country, strong enough to increase its sales forecast for the Z10 by a strong 40%, BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins told a Spanish newspaper that the BlackBerry Z10 has been drawing buyers from users of other platforms. That dovetails with comments made by Suni Dutt, BlackBerry India's managing director who said that 45% of Z10 buyers in the country were coming to BlackBerry from another platform. All of this good news reversed the action in shares of slumping BlackBerry which rose 77 cents to $13.35, the biggest rise in three weeks.

While Heins continues to say that sales of the all-touch first BlackBerry 10 handset have been topping "ambitious expectations," the executive added that operators want BlackBerry to succeed to be another alternative to "Samsung and Apple". The BlackBerryZ10 will launch in Mexico on March 20th through Telcel. At the end of this week, the device will be available in 21 countries.

One country that has not yet received the phone is the U.S. Rumors have started to spread that AT&T will be the first to launch the BlackBerry Z10 in the United States on March 15th. T-Mobile is also expected to launch the Z10 in the middle of this month while Verizon said that it will release the phone at the end of this month. Then, in a few weeks we get to do it all over again as the QWERTY keyboard equipped BlackBerry Q10 gets launched globally.


source: Bloomberg