BlackBerry unveils first 4G smartphone in Sri Lanka

Thursday, 15 August 2013 00:01 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

By Shabiya Ali Ahlam BlackBerry yesterday launched its first 4G smartphone – the Q10 – in Sri Lanka, offering customers an array of new features. Available only in two colours, white and BB’s signature black, the smartphone combines the power of the BB 10 platform with a large re-engineered physical keypad and stunning touch screen display, which is the largest ever on BB 10 phone. The new phone has been priced at Rs. 109,990. Creatively designed to spell out elegance, the BB Q10 is built with advanced hardware, communications and multimedia features. It also has improved battery life, allowing one to stay connected all day long.

In addition to its unique new design, the BB Q10 brings five key advanced features amongst many that will certainly provide a consumer with a pleasant experience. The first is the BB Hub which brings conversations together allowing easy and instant access to different activities. Then there is the new BB Balance Technology which easily separates and secures work applications and data from personal content. Bringing an all new messenger service, the BBM (BlackBerry Messenger) in the BB 10 series is incorporated with voice calling and video chat. Attempting to help its users to get organised, the BB Remember feature allows gaining instant access to different information located on the phone. Introducing a unique feature altogether, the BB Q10 comes with an inbuilt triple microphone to improve call quality through effective notice cancellation. With over 72 million customers worldwide, BB recognises Sri Lanka as an important market as it shows the characteristic of being socially connected, according to BlackBerry Director of Commercial Business for India Hitesh Shah who, however, couldn’t disclose how many BB customers exist in Sri Lanka. “We are thrilled to launch the first QWERTY BB 10 smartphone for our customers in Sri Lanka. The joy of typing on BB’s signature keypad along with the power of BB 10 creates a new unique mobile computing experience for our customers in the enterprise and consumer sectors,” said Shah at the launch event. “We are sure this will be well received in Sri Lanka. Having recently launched the BB 10 in India, it is doing extremely well there. It’s just that some time will have to be given for the market to pick up,” he clarified. Introduced in 1999, BB is the most secure smartphone platform available in the entire market to date. “Other platforms are not even close to what we have,” Shah added confidently. According to him, 90% of the Fortune 500 countries and government agencies are BB users, simply due to the ‘gold standard’ of enterprise security offered by the device. Apps are also available for BB 10 customers and Shah revealed that BB World has over 160,000 apps to date with over five billion apps downloaded. Although high optimism was shown by BB’s visiting officials, BB 10 series’ sales have noted to be slow in other regions as it is noted to have failed to gain traction with consumers. When this was brought up with Shah, he said that it is certainly not the case.