Research In Motion Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) (TSE:BB) is looking forward to tap growth in the emerging economies such as Brazil and Indonesia with low priced phones. The company is trying to monetize on its popular instant messaging system, an application, which has been widely successful in these countries, reports Bloomberg.
The Canadian Smartphone maker announced that it will make available its Blackberry Messenger service, which totals for over 10 billion messages per day, and used by 60 million people worldwide to Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPhone and Android devices this summer.
Yesterday, in the live conference, which is being held in Orlando, Florida, CEO Heins said that BB10 has been received well by the customers, and BBM can be allowed to grow on its own merit now.
Sales Numbers-Region wise
In the last quarter, Europe, the Middle East and Africa contributed 46 percent of sales, which was an increase of 37 percent over three quarters earlier. The sales in Latin America were stable at 14 percent, and in Asia the numbers came down from 21 percent to 18 percent.
The low priced Q5 will come in four shades and will be available in the market in starting of July. The phone will run on updated 10.1 operating system, which will be launched this week.
Investors & Analysts Take
One of the investors Kevin Stadtler sounded cautious when he said that, by doing so, Research In Motion Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) (TSE:BB) might lose its control over one of the most popular apps that it offers and which will be helpful in enhancing the demand of Blackberry Q10 devices against the cheaper Android phones. The BBM will be a key feature in the sales of the low priced model of Blackberry Q5.
Stadtler who is the president of Fort Worth said that Q5 is mainly targeted towards the emerging market. Stadtler owns around 70,000 Research In Motion Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) (TSE:BB) shares. He, however, also said that once Research In Motion Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) (TSE:BB) allows its BBM on other devices it will give the Blackberry devices greater flexibility to communicate with the Androids and iPhones, which will remove any hurdle in the sale of Blackberry devices. “They actually have a better shot of selling BlackBerry devices by giving away the BBM app than not,” said Stadtler.
Steven Li, an analyst at Raymond James in Toronto said that the step taken by the company will be a double edge sword for the company. It will definitely tap the massive market of Android and iPhones, but it is still not clear how BBM will monetize when the app will be free to be downloaded on the devices.
