New BlackBerrys Go on Sale in Canada - Wall Street Journal

By WILL CONNORS TORONTO—Research In Motion Ltd. started selling its new BlackBerrys across its home market of Canada Tuesday, with two of the country's biggest carriers reporting strong orders and investors bidding up RIM shares. The first of two BlackBerry 10 phones, the Z10, rolled out in Britain last week, and is due to hit the United Arab Emirates early next week. All three markets are important ones for RIM, though the phone won't make its debut in the U.S.—the company's biggest and most lucrative market—until March. In Canada, the phone has been available for pre-orders from the country's carriers for several weeks. While those carriers haven't disclosed numbers, RIM and carrier executives said they are encouraged by early orders and interest so far. Still, despite the sense of a home-team advantage, the Canadian launch lacked the buzz of an Apple Inc. iPhone roll-out. At Eaton Centre, a busy downtown Toronto mall, small handfuls of customers gathered in front of retail shops to buy the new BlackBerry. In front of a Telus Corp. shop, there were four people in line, three to look at a Z10, one to buy an iPhone. A sales representative at the store said the store had 20 Z10s, compared with the 60 to 100 iPhones the shop typically gets in when a new iPhone rolls out. "It's not many, but we'll probably sell out today," the store representative said. Carriers are offering the phone for about 150 Canadian dollars with a three-year contract. (The U.S. and Canadian dollars are trading roughly at parity.) On Tuesday, Telus was also offering a $50 in-store credit when customers traded in an older phone. A spokesman from BCE Inc., which carries the phone under the Bell brand, said Z10 pre-orders were "higher than for any other BlackBerry before" and "sales are quite robust." A spokeswoman for Rogers Communications Inc. said customers have shown "great interest" in the new phones and that Rogers has received "thousands of pre-order requests," without specifying a number. The other BlackBerry 10 phone, the Q10, is expected to be introduced in April. The Q10 will feature a physical keyboard. RIM shares, now trading under a new ticker symbol announced during a global BB10 unveiling last week, were benefiting from the recent launches. In recent days, several analysts have forecast strong U.K. sales, citing early retail checks. On the Nasdaq Stock Market, RIM gained 6.9%, or $1.04, to $16.02 at 4 p.m. Earlier Tuesday, RIM Chief Executive Thorsten Heins answered questions about early impressions from U.K. sales during an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. "What we're seeing—with the white version [of the Z10] already sold out, lineups in some of the stores—is very, very encouraging," Mr. Heins said during the interview. "And the U.K. is a very competitive market, so having this kind of experience in the early days is very encouraging for BlackBerry 10." When asked during the interview about Canadian sales prospects, Mr. Heins said the company is getting "very, very exciting feedback" from Canadian carriers and that purchase orders were "beyond my expectations." via Technology - Google News http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&fd=R&usg=AFQjCNFivWdIUfw30aq1Ez5RQOoZMmyFBQ&url=http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323807004578286353328410478.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

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