Telecom Lead America: The BlackBerry X10 and Q10 retail price will be too high for new smartphone users, according to Analysys Mason.
The BlackBerry X10 and Q10 have all the ingredients to become successful smartphone models. However, good technology and design is only the first step, according to Analysys Mason Principal Analyst Ronan de Renesse and Research Analyst Patrick Rusby.
X10 and Q10 are designed to capture existing smartphone users, not new ones.
50 percent of new smartphone users in Europe will come for the prepay market where operator sales channels play a less important role and subsidies don’t exist.
BlackBerry’s ability to gain market share in the smartphone space will be linked to its applications ecosystem. App availability is a ‘must-have’ but the quality of the experience on long-tail apps will be determinant. According to a recent Analysys Mason study, long-tail apps (i.e. outside of top 50) from Google Play and Apple App Store see at least 10 times more engagement than on other platform.
BlackBerry 10’s success with enterprises will ultimately depend on whether it can win over CIOS and employees. For this it must offer a sufficient selection of enterprise apps and an improved UI as well as pushing the benefits of BES (BlackBerry Enterprise Server). There is a lot of competition for enterprise customers. Apple is very well established in the enterprise space, Android has the largest consumer base and Windows phone should integrate better with enterprises existing Microsoft systems.
Meanwhile, Ovum said Blackberry Z10 and Q10 will stand out from Android masses. However, Ovum believes that despite a well-designed Blackberry 10 platform, that will certainly attract short-term interest from existing users the company will struggle to appeal to a wider audience and in the long-term will become a niche player in the smartphone market.
