BlackBerry (the rebranded mobile maker RIM) has decided it’s time to pull out of the Japanese gadget market after the cost of translating its newest operating system BlackBerry 10 was considered too high.
The Canadian company’s consumer share with BlackBerry phones unfortunately hasn’t made much of an impact on the Far Eastern side of the market and up against tech titans such as Android and Apple, the brand’s figures show a decline of up to 5% in recent history. With this in mind and with a brand reinvention in full swing BlackBerry has decided – perhaps wisely – to step away from the plate.
That’s not to say Japan will go unfruitful when it comes to Canadian offerings – the company will still support older model mobiles that run on operating systems up to BlackBerry OS 7 in Japan.
The latest BlackBerry platform – BlackBerry 10 – launched last week in the UK and its country of origin Canada where the impressive Z10 smartphone was announced as the first host device. BlackBerry reports in a statement that this was the ‘best day ever’ for a BlackBerry launch in the motherland and 50% better than any other launch day in its history in Canada.
The newly announced BlackBerry Z10 is unlike any previous BlackBerry model that came before it. Resemblances can be drawn aesthetically and functionally between the Z10 and other available handsets from leading rivals and BlackBerry’s revamp offers a 4.2-inch 720p HD display, dual-core processor, 2GB RAM, 16GB storage, 8-megapixel camera with expansion available via micro-SD card.
The Gadget Helpline offers a helpful insight into how the new BlackBerry Z10 compares against the big guns – the Samsung Galaxy SIII and the Apple iPhone 5 – in a Smartphone Showdown!