The Canadian handset maker BlackBerry is looking to woo its retail channel with its value proposition and competitively pricing its new Z3. In the last eight months, the company has been trying to rebuild its channel trust, after struggling in the market for quiet sometime.
The company is also looking positive with its strategic five-year partnership with Foxconn for manufacturing its smartphones, which will ensure fastest time to market of the phones in the market and keep up with the demand of the retailers.
Speaking at the side-lines of the launch of Z3, Hitesh Shah, director Sales, BlackBerry India said, “The shift to BlackBerry 10 platform took us 18 months to launch a new product in the market. This gap had forced our loyal partners to start pitching other smartphones to stay in the business. But with all the corrections and new school of thoughts under the new management of John S Chen, CEO, we are gearing up to our retail strategies and going back to our old loyal partners for our new devices.”
The company is reinforcing its commitment into both general trade channel, large retailers and online marketplaces. “We wanted to show our partners that we are here to stay, and we are not exiting from the devices space. Nevertheless, in last two years, we have lost our markets here, but now we are all set to disrupt the smartphones markets.”
Shah also said that, “We understand that in retail channel a gap of 18 months without devices can lower the confidence of the channel in the brand value. But with our partnership with Foxconn we will be quick in delivering and launching the handset to the market. For example, it took us just three months to deliver and launch new Z3 in the market with new ODM partnership.”
As per the market analyst Blackberry has attempted a bold initiative with the launch of the Z3 model. The phone has competitive specifications in this price range. Although delayed in venturing into the budget smartphone segment, they are expected to fair well.
The new smart-phone boasts of a 5 inch capacitive display and a 1.2 GHz dual core Qualcomm Snapdragon processor with a 1.5 GB RAM. It runs on the 10.2.1 version of Blackberry OS, and features a 5 MP rear camera which is capable of a full HD 1080 pixel video capture.
Learning from the rebounding experience of Z10, which was initially launched at an exorbitant price by the Canadian company, the Z3 is priced keeping in mind the spending capacity of the middle class market in India.
Himanshu Chakrawarti, CEO, The Mobile Store said, “Our retail partnership with BlackBerry is old
and we have seen turbulent time, but now we are all set to revive our partnership and looking for an old innings.”
