BlackBerry (BBRY) failed to give specific details at its press event last week regarding the future availability of its new smartphones in the United States. The flagship BlackBerry Z10 smartphone launched in the United Kingdom last Friday, and is scheduled to be released in the coming weeks in Canada and the United Arab Emirates.

The company vaguely announced that the device will be available in the U.S. sometime in March. According to a leaked roadmap obtained by TmoNews, the BlackBerry Z10 may launch on T-Mobile on March 27th. As for pricing, Verizon (VZ) previously announced that the smartphone will be offered for $199 with a new two-year agreement. Interestingly enough, the document also suggests that T-Mobile will launch a Galaxy S III smartphone with LTE capabilities on March 27th or April 3rd. The purported roadmap follows below.

Via tmonews

One of those apps is Facebook-owned Instagram, which has been a phenomenon on the iPhone and Android handsets. Thankfully, for prospective BB10 converts, it appears that the filter-friendly photo-sharing app will be making an official appearance.

CrackBerry reports that Instagram will "definitely" become available for BB10 handsets, but was not drawn on a potential release date.

"While no formal announcement was made this week about Instagram coming to BlackBerry, we did get word that BlackBerry is engaged in the process with Instagram right now and that Instagram will definitely be coming to BlackBerry 10. No date yet, but it will be there. Let's hope sooner than later of course," wrote CrackBerry's Kevin Michaluk.

Some Instagram users would say the presence of the app on BB10 is as important as Facebook or Twitter. Announcements concerning high profile third-party app launches for BlackBerry 10 were thin on the ground during this week's launch event, so one feels more have to be forthcoming.

Members of the media wait for Research in Motion (RIM) CEO Thorsten Heins to officially unveil the BlackBerry 10 mobile platform as well as two new devices January 30, 2013 at the New York City Launch at Pier 36. Blckberry is hoping to make a comeback with the release of its lonng overdue BlackBerry 10, a new operating system that many analysts believe is RIM's last chance to become relevant again.











bY JuLee (Technewswebsite)

BlackBerry last night launched BlackBerry 10 across the world – dubbed ‘the re-designed, re-engineered, and re-invented BlackBerry’ platform that creates a new and unique mobile computing experience.

Available on two new smartphones, the BlackBerry Z10 (all-touch) and BlackBerry Q10 (touch with physical keyboard) smartphones powered by BlackBerry 10 offer a faster, smarter and smoother experience than any other BlackBerry.

BlackBerry unveiled the new BlackBerry Z10 and BlackBerry Q10 smartphones at events held simultaneously in New York, Toronto, London, Paris, Dubai, and Johannesburg.

“Today sees a re-invented BlackBerry launching an entirely new mobile experience,” said Thorsten Heins, President and CEO of BlackBerry.

“We are thrilled to be introducing BlackBerry 10 on the new BlackBerry Z10 and BlackBerry Q10 smartphones, to deliver a faster, smarter experience that continuously adapts to your needs.  Every feature, every gesture, and every detail in BlackBerry 10 is designed to keep you moving.”

Highlights of BlackBerry 10

BlackBerry 10 is a robust and reliable platform that is smooth and responsive. It has a modern design and a gesture-based interface that is highly discoverable. It is designed to support, learn, and adapt to the way you work and share with features like:

• The ever present BlackBerry Hub, which is a single place to manage all your conversations whether personal or work email, BBM messages, social media updates or notifications, and the ability to “peek” into the BlackBerry Hub from anywhere, so you’re always only one swipe away from what matters to you.

• BlackBerry Flow, where the BlackBerry 10 experience excels by enabling features and apps to flow seamlessly together, helping you complete the task at hand effortlessly and efficiently. For example, you can tap on an attendee listed for a meeting to see their latest tweet or LinkedIn profile. Or tap the thumbnail of a picture you just took to launch the Picture editor and quickly apply a transformation or filter, then instantly share it with your contacts.

• A keyboard that understands and adapts to you, that learns what words you use and how you use them, then offers them up to you so you can type faster and more accurately.

• BBM (BlackBerry Messenger), which allows you to share things with the people that matter to you in an instant. BBM in BlackBerry 10 introduces the ability to share your screen with another BlackBerry 10 contact.

• BlackBerry Balance technology, which elegantly separates and secures work applications and data from personal content on BlackBerry devices.

• Time Shift, an astonishing camera feature that lets you capture a group shot where everyone is smiling with their eyes wide open. Story Maker, which lets you bring a collection of photos and videos together, along with music and effects, to produce an HD movie that you can instantly share.

• The new BlackBerry 10 browser, which sets the industry benchmark for HTML5 support on smartphones, is incredibly fast. Scrolling or zooming is fluid and responsive. The browser includes many advanced features, supports multiple tabs, lets you browse sites privately, includes a reader mode, and integrates with the platform for easily sharing content.

• BlackBerry Remember, which combines memos, tasks and much more into a single experience. It helps you organise and manage information you have on your smartphone around projects or ideas, letting you collect content such as websites, emails, photos, documents, and other files, and then like a To-Do list, lets you create tasks, assign due dates, and track your progress. If your BlackBerry 10 smartphone is set up with a work account, your Microsoft Outlook Tasks will automatically be wirelessly synced with BlackBerry Remember.  If you have configured an Evernote account with your smartphone, BlackBerry Remember will sync Evernote workbooks as well.

• BlackBerry Safeguard technology that helps protect what is important to you, and the business you work for.

• Built-in support for Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync so your BlackBerry Z10 or BlackBerry Q10 smartphone can be simply connected and managed as other ActiveSync devices in a company, or enabled with BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10 to gain secure access to work email, “behind the firewall” applications and data, and benefit from other security and enterprise mobility management features.

• The BlackBerry World storefront, which now includes 70,000 BlackBerry 10 apps. In addition, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Foursquare apps for BlackBerry 10 are pre-installed, and BlackBerry 10 customers will have access to leading applications from across the globe. Leading application providers including Disney, Cisco, Foursquare, Skype and Rovio have committed to the platform.

“At Foursquare, we are extremely excited to launch our new BlackBerry 10 application and to continue developing on the platform,” said Dennis Crowley, Co-Founder and CEO of Foursquare.

“Our team built the app just for BlackBerry 10, and the result is an amazing Foursquare Explore experience to help people around the world make the most of where they are.”

“We’re delighted to bring Angry Birds Star Wars to BlackBerry fans around the world,” said Petri Järvilehto, EVP of Games, at Rovio.

“It’s a great platform that gives a fantastic gaming experience, so fans can experience the struggle of Rebel Birds vs. Imperial Pigs to the fullest!”

“Bringing Where’s My Water? and Where’s My Perry? to BlackBerry 10 smartphones will introduce some of Disney’s most popular mobile games to new audiences,” said Tim O’Brien, VP of Business Development, Disney Games.

“The new BlackBerry 10 platform is an exciting opportunity to expand Disney’s network of mobile players.”

“We’re proud to extend Cisco’s WebEx technology to the BlackBerry 10 platform letting customers of any size join, start, view content, and stay connected to WebEx meetings right from their BlackBerry 10 smartphone,” said Raj Gossain, Vice President of Product Management, Cloud Collaboration Applications Technology Group at Cisco.

“Our customers access Cisco collaboration capabilities, such as instant messaging, IP voice calling and conferencing on BlackBerry smartphones to stay connected anywhere, any time, and with anyone. RIM and Cisco have worked together to develop an application that is user friendly and meets the needs of our global customers.”

“We are excited about our plans to bring Skype to smartphones running the brand new BlackBerry 10 platform,” said Bob Rosin, VP & GM of Business Development for Microsoft’s Skype division.

“We are working closely with BlackBerry to ensure Skype runs great on BlackBerry 10 devices. This will give BlackBerry 10 users a great Skype experience, including free voice and video calling, sending instant messages and text messages, sharing photos, videos and files, and calling to landlines and mobiles at Skype’s low rates.”

BlackBerry Z10 and BlackBerry Q10 Smartphones

The new BlackBerry 10 smartphones are elegant and distinctive, and the fastest, most advanced BlackBerry smartphones yet. They feature 1.5 Ghz dual core processors with 2GB of RAM, 16GB of internal storage, and an expandable memory card slot. They include the latest enhancements in high density pixel and screen technology to display clear, sharp, and incredibly vivid images. Both feature a micro HDMI out port for presentations, and advanced sensors such NFC (near field communications) to support mobile payments and the exchange of information with a tap of the smartphone. They also have a removable battery.

The BlackBerry Z10 and BlackBerry Q10 smartphones will each come in White and Black.

A range of accessories for the new BlackBerry 10 smartphones, including the new BlackBerry Mini Stereo Speaker as well as a variety of carrying and charging solutions including a unique charger that provides on-the-go charging, will be available from select carriers and retailers.

Pricing and Availability

Worldwide, we have several key markets that are revealing pricing and availability today, including the UK, Canada and UAE.

• In the UK, the BlackBerry Z10 will be available beginning tomorrow on pay monthly contracts and pre-pay plans from EE, O2, Vodafone, Phones 4u, BT, 3UK and the Carphone Warehouse. BlackBerry Z10 smartphones will be available fully subsidised on competitive monthly pay contracts. Price points will vary according to carriers and retail partners.

• In Canada, the BlackBerry Z10 will be available on February 5th. Pricing will vary by carrier partner, but it will retail for around $149.99 on a 3 year contract.

• In the UAE, the BlackBerry Z10 will be available on February 10th. Pricing will vary by carrier partner, but unsubsidised it will retail for AED 2,599.

• In the U.S. market, we expect availability with most carriers for the BlackBerry Z10 to be in March. Today, U.S. carriers will start announcing pre-registration and price plans.

JuLee (Technewswebsite)

The company, which once ruled the mobile messaging market with handsets that encouraged such devoted use that they were compared to crack cocaine, has seen a rough few years. It’s market share, down by more than half in the last year alone, has collapsed as it failed to match increasingly attractive touchscreen smartphones and the changing demands of consumers.

BlackBerry 10 is meant to change all that.

“This is a huge launch for RIM,” said Ted Schadler, Principal Analyst, Forrester Research. “They held off shipping it until it was ready, they made sure there were no bugs. Clearly they wanted to make sure they had the best product in the hands of the right people and the most carriers. That tells you a lot about what’s riding on this for them.”

“This product has to work for them, it’s make or break time for RIM,” he said.

So far, the response from those who have used the new software and the first phones has been good.

“It’s a really positive step for the company,” said Ramon Llamas, an analyst with IDC. “It puts BlackBerry on the same level as Apple, Android and Windows Phone and brings them into 2013 rather than being stuck back in 2010.”

One of the areas that’s getting a lot of the early attention is the phone’s messaging hub, which brings together emails, Facebook messages, Twitter direct messages, SMS and all the other messaging options in the phone. All messages can be read and replied to from the hub, which is available from any screen on the phone.

“On another platform, you’d have to open those applications to respond,” said Schadler. “RIM has it so that with a swipe, you can peek into the hub.”

The phone’s divide between personal and work modes has also been praised. Security settings in work mode can be completely determined and customised by the employer, corporate email can be accessed and company intranet sites visited all without mixing any of that data with the personal mode. In the latter mode, the user is free to do whatever they want on the phone, and there shouldn’t be any impact on the potentially confidential data stored on the work side of the device.

“I liked the navigation,” said Chris Hazelton, an analyst with The 451 Group, who said he’d used one of the first handsets that RIM will unveil next week with partner Verizon Wireless. “It’s different. It’s a good way to manage multiple applications and I didn’t notice any lag. I was very impressed with the performance of the device.”

The messaging and work mode is playing to one of RIM’s strengths: it’s long relationship with corporate IT departments. Those IT departments have to deploy RIM’s BlackBerry Enterprise Server to run the corporate BlackBerry platform and, for the first time, the software also supports management of devices running Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android.

“I’m still not sold on this strategy,” said Hazleton. “It’s not like RIM had a choice in not supporting iOS and Android, but that opens the door to supporting other devices in BlackBerry shops.”

Enterprise IT departments are also fielding advances from Microsoft these days, which just launched its Windows Phone 8 OS. Microsoft, like RIM, has deep roots in enterprise IT work and with the BlackBerry 10 launch the two companies will battling for third place in the smartphone market.

“That’s a hard race to handicap,” said Schadler. “Unless you look at the size of the companies, the amount of money they can spend and the amount of money they can stand to lose. And that’s when it gets tough for RIM.”

Stockholders appear bullish on the chances of BlackBerry 10. The company’s share price has more than doubled since mid-September, when it reversed a slide that had been going on for months, but at around US$17, it still remains well below the high of June 2008 when it was trading above $140.

For the coming year, IDC predicts RIM’s market share will fall slightly to 4.4 percent of the smartphone market. Phone shipments will rise from just over 40 million in 2013 to just over 58 million in 2016, said IDC. But that’s slightly behind overall smartphone market growth, so RIM’s market share is forecast to slide further to 4.2 percent in 2016, the research company said.