BlackBerry 10 Smartphones will be available end of February says COO Kristian Tear.
Research In Motion will begin selling its first BlackBerry 10 smartphones on multiple continents within 30 days of the company’s Jan. 30 launch event, says COO Kristian Tear.
That means that if RIM take up to the whole 30 days, then the latest the phones will be available will be March 1, 2013 and if they stay within the 30 days, they will be available by the end of February.
Of course, the chances that they will launch in the selected countries on the same day and on all countries carriers is a remote one, so it is expected that these dates will vary regionally.
“We submitted to 50 carriers to begin with, and obviously that number is increasing as we move forward,” he said. “Our ambition is to make this a global launch, everything will not happen at the same time, but it will be a global launch.”
“We have to agree with carriers as well on what they want to announce when, so it’s not absolutely to our own discretion,” Tear said.
Some analysts had been expecting a March debut and this could indeed still be a possibility, although the beginning of March looks more feasible now than the predicted end of March.
RIM are still keeping Mum about the details of the two smartphones, which carriers will initially support the phones, and if any will have exclusivity deals. This had disappointed a lot of people who felt that the launch announcement still provided no hard evidence of the two smartphones or their availability.
No doubt, the speculation between now and January 30 will continue and the only real thing we know is that BlackBerry 10 is coming and we will find out officially come January 30.
