Possible BB10 retail sales in Feb 2013Research In Motion Ltd. (RIM)plans to showcase the first two of its BlackBerry 10 smartphones on Jan. 30 and then start selling the devices in February, moving forward with a critical step in its comeback bid.
“We want to do it as quickly as possible,” Chief Operating Officer Kristian Tear said in an interview following RIM’s announcement of the Jan. 30 date earlier in the day. Though the first phones won’t go on sale simultaneously worldwide, RIM is aiming for a release on multiple continents within 30 days of the unveiling, Tear said.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-12/rim-to-unveil-blackberry-10-on-jan-30-as-part-of-comeback-bid.html?cmpid=yhoo
Reuters news
Evercore Partners analyst Mark McKechnie believes the BB 10 devices will be available within two to four weeks of the launch event, but some such as Peter Misek of Jefferies expect the devices to go on sale only in March.
ALL OR NOTHING
RIM says its new devices will be faster and smoother and have a large catalog of applications that are now crucial to the success of any new line of smartphones.
Last week, the new platform and devices won U.S. government security clearance, potentially allowing both U.S. and Canadian government agencies to deploy the new smartphones as soon as they are available.
These were the first BlackBerry products to win Federal Information Processing Standard 140-2 certifications ahead of their introduction, the company said.
RIM began carrier tests on the BB10 devices last month. The Canadian company hopes they will help it win back some of the market share it lost to the iPhone and devices that run on Google Inc's Android operating system