The BlackBerry Z10 running the new BB10 operating system is a pivotal phone for the company formerly known as RIM. It’s BlackBerry’s flagship all-touch device, and while it has fine specs and cool features, the phone may not be enough to save the beleaguered Waterloo-based company.
To be clear, the BlackBerry Z10 is not a bad phone by any means. According to various sources, the phone’s launches in the UK and Canada were quite successful.
It has respectable specs, including a 1280X768 4.2-inch display, an 8-megapixel camera, NFC, LTE, and plenty of storage, and that doesn’t include all of the nifty features built into BB10.
Unfortunately, many of those features and specs are already on competing phones from Android OEMs and Apple, making it difficult to convince users on other platforms to jump ship. Even messaging, which BlackBerry has taken to a new level, might not be enough to pull Android and iOS users from their respective platforms.
BB10 has possibly the best all-touch messaging experience available, but traditional BlackBerry users will hold out for the QWERTY-packed Q10, while non-BlackBerry people will likely need more than a cool keyboard to migrate.
And then you start to measure the various platforms ecosystem-for-ecosystem, both in terms of digital content and accessories. Apple’s content library for music, movies, and apps extends way further than BlackBerry, and the same is true for Android.
BlackBerry has promised that BB10 will launch with over 70,000 apps, more than any other OS at launch time. In fact, many of them will be the top apps we use today. However, I’m not convinced it’s enough to compete.
At the end of the day, the BlackBerry Z10 is a fine phone. It just happens to be very late.
By the way, the BlackBerry Z10 is allegedly delayed getting to U.S. carriers, but it appears that T-Mobile wants to be first in line with a mid-March launch.
The Post was Firstly Published On TechCrunch.
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