July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

It’s been five months since BlackBerry changed its name and launched its first BlackBerry 10 smartphones, the Z10 and Q10. Today the company is holding its annual BlackBerry Live conference (formerly called BlackBerry World) in Orlando (yes, the day before Google’s I/O developer conference begins).

Proving that BlackBerry is targeting all markets, Heins announced the company’s first budget BlackBerry 10 device, the Q5. It’ll come in red, white, black, and pink, and Heins describes it as a device “built for emerging markets.” It looks like a colorful version of the company’s previous BlackBerry Curve line.

The Q5 will launch globally this summer, but no pricing was announced. (Expect it to be cheap, obviously.)

“Some of you said last year would be the last conference for BlackBerry. I’m happy to say, they were wrong,” said BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins on stage at the event. “We are not only still here, we are firing on all cylinders as a company… We’re definitely in the race. In one year, we’ve brought this company to a profitable quarter.”

BlackBerry needs all the help it can get. I loathed the Z10, which was so half-baked it felt like a device the company should have released two years ago. The keyboard equipped Q10 seemed like a better fit for the company’s audience, but it wasn’t released until several months after the Z10.

“We will show the world that Blackberry understands mobile better than anyone else … it is in our DNA,” Heins said. “BlackBerry 10 as a platform is built for mobile.”

BlackBerry now has more than 120,000 apps in its app store, and it’s getting popular apps like Skype with the recent BlackBerry 10.1 update. The company also lets developers easily run Android apps on BlackBerry 10, so it’ll be interesting to see just how many of those apps are actually from Google’s platform.

Taking the term “mobile computing” a bit literally, BlackBerry also showed off a concept Bentley vehicle powered entirely by QNX, the operating system at the core of BlackBerry 10. Heins showed off two-way video calling with full stereo sound, which also took advantage of the car’s large touchscreen display.

For a more real-world view of what QNX can do, Heins was join on stage by Johann Jungwirth, the CEO of Mercedes Benz’s North American R&D group. Jungwirth pointed out that QNX is already being used in some Mercedes cars. “All of the cars we are bringing to market now are connected and have the ability to be ‘always on,’” he said.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

It’s too soon to write off the company formerly known as Research In Motion completely: BlackBerry chief executive Thorsten Heins said the company expects to sell “tens of millions” of its new BlackBerry Q10, according to Bloomberg.

Heins spoke with Bloomberg Television during the Milken Institute conference in Los Angeles. His sales prediction is pretty ambitious given than the Q10 — the first major smartphone in recent memory to have a physical keyboard — only started shipping a few days ago.

The BlackBerry Q10 received pretty good reviews, although its BlackBerry 10 operating system is a bit of a gamble for the company, since it’s brand new and there’s still a very small number of apps available for it. In our review, the BlackBerry Z10, which shipped in February and which also runs BlackBerry 10, looked promising, but its charms faded quickly thanks to the new OS.

“We have very, very good first signs already after the launch in the U.K.,” Heins told Bloomberg. “This is going into the installed base of more than 70 million BlackBerry users, so we have quite some expectations. We expect several tens of million of units.”

Confidence is all that Wall Street needed to send BlackBerry stock up nearly 4 percent to close the day at $15.61, its highest level since March 21.

Photo credit (with Q10 on the right, Z10 on the left): Devindra Hardawar/VentureBeat

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Blackberry lost a big enterprise customer today. Home Depot announced that it will soon replace 10,000 of its workers’ Blackberries with iPhones, causing the stock to take a nearly 5 percent tumble today.

Research in Motion recently rebranded itself to Blackberry, the name of its line of phones, a move that coincided with the launch of two new phones — the touchscreen Z10 and the keyboard-ed Q10 — running its latest operating system Blackbery 10. The company is banking on BB10 as a way to make it a relevant player alongside Google and Apple, which produce the obviously popular iOS and Android operating systems. The company also brought on Grammy-winning singer Alicia Keys as creative director.

A Home Depot spokesperson confirmed to Reuters that it will be replacing Blackberry phones with iPhones for its “executives, managers, and corporate staffers.”

The launch of those phones, however, revealed that investors might find Blackberry’s efforts “too little too late.” The stock closed down 12 percent that day. Blackberry soon thereafter announced that it would not be releasing the phones in Japan, as the market has not been favorable for sales.

The company’s stock closed down 4.16 percent today at $15.73 a share.

“We have over 2,700 unique businesses in North America already registered for our BlackBerry 10 Ready Program,” Blackberry spokesperson Amy McDowell told Reuters. “We are confident that BlackBerry is, and will continue to be, the best solution for corporations managing large smartphone deployments.”

And if only to add insult to injury, Keys was spotted tweeting from her iPhone. Ouch, sick burn.

BBRY data by YCharts

Home Depot image via daysofthundr46/Flickr

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

If you are concerned that BlackBerry’s latest smartphone attempt is going to fail miserably, BlackBerry really wants to convince you otherwise.

The company said today the Canadian debut of its Z10 smartphone was its best product launch in its history.

“In fact, it was more than 50 percent better than any other launch day in our history in Canada. In the U.K., we have seen close to three times our best performance ever for the first week of sales for a BlackBerry smartphone,” BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins said in a statement to VentureBeat.

Hein’s statement should make you roll your eyes a bit because in it he says quite a lot while also saying not much at all, at least mathematically. The reality is that there’s not much to talk about here without any actual sales numbers (not that BlackBerry is particularly likely to announce them).

But while early sales of the Z10 may be looking good, the real challenge for BlackBerry will be keeping them that way. The odds right now seem in the company’s favor, but perhaps we should wait until the Z10 makes it to the U.S. next month before we make any real predictions.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

If good things come to those who wait, the BlackBerry Q10 must be spectacular.

BlackBerry is hinting once again that it may be a while before its new keyboard-equipped smartphone makes it to the U.S.

BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins told the Associated Press that “rigid” carrier testing could delay the Q10′s release by up to ten weeks after the release of the Z10, which is expected in mid-March.. Translation? Americans may not see the Q10 until June — and even that’s not a sure thing.

That wait time is bad news for consumers, but it’s certainly worse for BlackBerry, which has had to delay BlackBerry 10 multiple times already.

While it’s going to be a while before the new BlackBerry phones make to the U.S., there’s reason to believe that they’ll be pretty successful when they do arrive. According to Heins, early sales of the Z10 in the UK are looking pretty good. “[Sales are] beyond expectations,” he told the AP while declining to give exact numbers.

That’s promising news for BlackBerry, whose biggest enemy right now is the ticking of the clock.

Photo: Devindra Hardawar/VentureBeat

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

The future of  the BlackBerry is here, and it comes in two varieties.

The company formerly known as RIM has announced the Z10 and Q10, the first devices running its spanking-new BlackBerry 10 operating system. 

Longtime BlackBerry fans should be most excited with the Q 10, as it comes with the brand’s trademark physical keyboard.

“We know there are a lot of physical keyboard lovers out there,” RIM BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins said.

While BlackBerry didn’t divulge much in the way of the Q10′s specs, it did note that the device comes with what’s called a “glass weave cover.” “You won’t find it on any other device. It is thinner, lighter, and stronger than plastic,” Heins said.

Slightly more standard is the Z10, an all-touch device that features a 4.2-inch screen, 1.5GHz processor, and 16GB of internal storage.

We’ll have more information about the devices as BlackBerry announces it.