Blackberry's flagship, all-touch device has been available for a while now but its qwerty brother is yet to enter the market. According to Fierce Wireless the device will finally enter the US market by the end of May for $249 across all 4 major carriers - Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile. This should give the struggling brand a much needed boost as they try to regain market share in the American market.
The $249 price-tag is $50 more than high-end devices including even Blackberry's own Z10 touchscreen flagship. Anil Doradla, an analyst at William Blair & Co., told Bloomberg that pricing the Q10 higher than most high-end smartphones on contract is probably a deliberate effort to target business users who may be putting the phone on their expense accounts. The qwerty keypad is also more likely to be targeted towards the traditional enterprise users, where as the Z10 and its touchscreen display is directed more at the general consumer market.
"They've decided this is not going to be a mass appeal phone, but one targeted at road warriors," Doradla said. "It's not the wrong thing to do."
Source: The Verge
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