BlackBerry Z10 makes US debut

New York: BlackBerry’s new Z10 smartphone goes on sale in the US today, almost two months after its debut in other countries, putting the company’s turnaround plan to the test in its largest market.

Chief Executive Officer Thorsten Heins kicked off US sales of the touch-screen device last night at a theater in New York’s Times Square. The event, which featured performances by rapper Ludacris and R&B singer Janelle Monae, marked the arrival of the Z10 at AT&T Inc. stores today. The phone will be offered by Verizon Wireless on March 28.

“A lot of hard work has resulted in the “culmination of selling a fantastic device in the US,” Heins told those gathered at the Best Buy Theatre.

Heins is trying to reverse BlackBerry’s fortunes in the US, where the onetime smartphone leader has lost ground to Apple Inc.’s iPhone and Google Inc.’s Android. Sales in the country fell by almost half to $520 million in the third quarter from a year earlier, through the US still accounts for about a fifth of revenue for Waterloo, Ontario-based BlackBerry.

“There’s no risk of overstating the importance of the US for BlackBerry,” said Ramon Llamas, an analyst with IDC in Framingham, Massachusetts. “It’s such an important bellwether market.”

AT&T, the second-largest US carrier, will offer the Z10 for $199.99 on a two-year contract, putting it at the same price level as the main iPhone. The phone was first unveiled on January 30, and it’s been available for weeks in the UK, Canada and other markets.

Heins has attributed the US delay to the longer equipment-testing procedures of American carriers.

Verizon Wireless, the nation’s biggest carrier, has begun taking orders for the Z10 ahead of making it available in stores next week. Sprint Nextel Corp, No. 3 in the market, won’t sell the Z10 at all. It’s waiting to offer the Q10, a version with a smaller screen and physical keyboard that’s coming out later this year.

Early demand suggests that the Z10 will perform as well in the US as in BlackBerry’s home market of Canada, Chief Marketing Officer Frank Boulben said in an interview.

The rollout of the new phones is supported by the biggest marketing campaign in the company’s history. As part of the blitz, BlackBerry splurged on a Super Bowl ad in early February, betting that it could build excitement around the phone even though a US debut wasn’t imminent.

BlackBerry, long popular with corporate clients, has tried to project a more artistic image with the new products. At the January 30 unveiling, it introduced Grammy-winning singer Alicia Keys as its global creative director, a new title.

At last night’s event, Richard Piasentin, BlackBerry’s head of US sales, said he had been on the road for almost four weeks straight promoting the new line-up.

Critics have praised the Z10’s features, including its virtual keyboard. It also dispenses with a home button, which is used by the iPhone and Samsung Electronics Co’s Galaxy S to take users back to the main screen. The Z10 relies instead on gesture-driven navigation to switch between applications and peek at messages while still in the Web browser.

Shares of the company, formerly known as Research In Motion Ltd, have rallied 36 per cent this year on optimism that the new lineup can revive BlackBerry’s prospects. The stock added one per cent yesterday, closing at $16.16. Still, it remains down almost 90 per cent from its 2008 high of $147.55.

Sales Projections

The staggered rollout of the new devices makes it tougher for analysts to predict the impact on quarterly results. Sales estimates for the period that ended March 2 range from as little as $2.41 billion to as much as $3.42 billion. The average estimate is $2.84 billion. While that would represent a decline of 32 per cent from a year earlier, it’s a smaller drop than the company posted the previous quarter.