BlackBerry, formerly known as Research in Motion, on Monday launched its new operating system BlackBerry 10 and its all-touch
Z10 device in India.
The India launch, in Mumbai, comes over three weeks after the global unveiling in New York on January 30. At the time the company had rechristened itself BlackBerry, the brand name of its mobile handsets.
The
Z10 is priced at Rs 43,490 and will be available from February 26. It is the second most expensive BlackBerry phone after the BlackBerry Porsche Design, which is priced at about Rs 1.4 lakh. Sunil Dutt, MD, BlackBerry India, said India is the first market in Asia-Pacific to get the Z10.
Apple's iPhone 5 was made available in India late last year with the cheapest model priced at Rs 45,500, while the Samsung Galaxy S III's 16 GB version is now available for Rs 29,500.
These products, along with the BlackBerry Q10, which sports a physical QWERTY keyboard, are the company's most ambitious effort to date to regain its lost glory in the smartphone segment. RIM revolutionised the market with its handsets but soon lost ground to Apple and Samsung.
The Q10 will be launched in India in April, said Dutt. Also present at the event were Vivek Bhardwaj, head of
BlackBerry's software portfolio, and actor Ranbir Kapoor, who has been signed on as a brand ambassador.
"There are 70,000 apps on BB10, of which 9,000 were developed in India," Dutt added.
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