Big Data. Big Decisions
InformationWeek
Special Coverage Series


BlackBerry Z10 U.S. Launch Prepped

AT&T is the first U.S. carrier to announce a firm launch date for the BlackBerry Z10.

BlackBerry 10: Visual Tour Of Smartphones, OS
BlackBerry 10: Visual Tour Of Smartphones, OS
(click image for larger view and for slideshow)
AT&T started accepting preorders for the BlackBerry Z10 smartphone on March 12. The device will hit AT&T's retail stores, website, and enterprise sales channels on March 22, making AT&T the first to officially launch the comeback smartphone from BlackBerry in the U.S.

AT&T is selling the Z10 for $199.99 with a new contract. The no-commitment price for the Z10 is $549.99. About the only feature that differentiates AT&T's Z10 from those offered by T-Mobile USA and Verizon Wireless is support for its LTE 4G network. Otherwise, the AT&T Z10 offers all the same specs and services found on other variants.

More Insights

Webcasts

More >>

White Papers

More >>

Reports

More >>

Verizon Wireless announced in January that it would sell the Z10 for $199.99 too, but it has yet to announce availability. T-Mobile USA has announced neither pricing nor availability of its Z10. Sprint, meanwhile, is skipping the Z10 and will offer only the QWERTY-equipped BlackBerry Q10 later this year. Sprint has offered no specific details regarding the Q10's launch. (If you're impatient and slightly nuts, you can buy the Z10 today from MVNO Solavei, which recently dropped the price of the Z10 from $999 to $649. Solavei offers no-contract service using T-Mobile USA's network.)

The Z10 is already available in some markets, including Canada and the U.K., where reports suggest initial sales have been decent. BlackBerry itself has been tight-lipped about actual device sales, though it touts them as above expectations. It's probably safe to assume that since BlackBerry has not made any splashy announcements regarding specific sales figures, the device has yet to reach one million units sold.

[ Is your Blackberry running out of juice? Check out these tips. Blackberry Z10 Battery Life Tips. ]

Analyst projections for the Z10 have been all over the map. The latest comes from BlueFin's Paul Peterson, who wrote, that "it appears that management is confident that the BB10 launches will be an unqualified success" because it upped component orders for the Z10. "Our checks indicate that some suppliers are seeing 6-month order coverage that is several orders of magnitude larger than the previous 6 months," continued Peterson, "with some suppliers believing that they can get back to 2011 revenue levels if the present forecast levels hold up."

BlackBerry is talking about its successful approach to enterprise adoption of BlackBerry 10, the Z10, and BES 10. In a blog post, BlackBerry says some 4,400 businesses in North America have registered for the BlackBerry 10 Ready Offer.

The BlackBerry 10 Ready Program is meant to help BlackBerry's enterprise customers gain the knowledge and tools they need to deploy BlackBerry 10 and BES 10 in their respective businesses. Some of those businesses include Air Canada, McCain Foods, Ricoh Canada and Softchoice.

Attend Interop Las Vegas May 6-10 and learn the emerging trends in information risk management and security. Use Priority Code MPIWK by March 22 to save an additional $200 off the early bird discount on All Access and Conference Passes. Join us in Las Vegas for access to 125+ workshops and conference classes, 300+ exhibiting companies, and the latest technology. Register today!



Related Reading




Currently we allow the following HTML tags in comments:

Single tags

These tags can be used alone and don't need an ending tag.

<br> Defines a single line break

<hr> Defines a horizontal line

Matching tags

These require an ending tag - e.g. <i>italic text</i>

<a> Defines an anchor

<b> Defines bold text

<big> Defines big text

<blockquote> Defines a long quotation

<caption> Defines a table caption

<cite> Defines a citation

<code> Defines computer code text

<em> Defines emphasized text

<fieldset> Defines a border around elements in a form

<h1> This is heading 1

<h2> This is heading 2

<h3> This is heading 3

<h4> This is heading 4

<h5> This is heading 5

<h6> This is heading 6

<i> Defines italic text

<p> Defines a paragraph

<pre> Defines preformatted text

<q> Defines a short quotation

<samp> Defines sample computer code text

<small> Defines small text

<span> Defines a section in a document

<s> Defines strikethrough text

<strike> Defines strikethrough text

<strong> Defines strong text

<sub> Defines subscripted text

<sup> Defines superscripted text

<u> Defines underlined text

BYTE encourages readers to engage in spirited, healthy debate, including taking us to task. However, BYTE moderates all comments posted to our site, and reserves the right to modify or remove any content that it determines to be derogatory, offensive, inflammatory, vulgar, irrelevant/off-topic, racist or obvious marketing/SPAM. BYTE further reserves the right to disable the profile of any commenter participating in said activities.

Disqus Tips To upload an avatar photo, first complete your Disqus profile. | View the list of supported HTML tags you can use to style comments. | Please read our commenting policy.

Follow InformationWeek

By The Numbers

What Are Your Primary Concerns About Using Big Data Software?

Base: 417 respondents at organizations using or planning to deploy data analytics, BI or statistical analysis software
Data: InformationWeek 2013 Analytics, Business Intelligence and Information Management Survey of 541 business technology professionals, October 2012

What Do You Think?

What's your attitude about SQL analysis on top of Hadoop?
We want fast, standard SQL analysis capabilities on Hadoop ASAP
Hadoop is for unstructured data; SQL is for relational databases
We'll give SQL on Hadoop a try, but relational DBs will remain the mainstay
Given strong SQL support on Hadoop, we'd nix the data warehouse
We're not interested in Hadoop
No opinion



Related Content

From Our Sponsor

Five Big Data Challenges and How to Overcome Them with Visual Analytics

Five Big Data Challenges and How to Overcome Them with Visual Analytics

Business leaders often need a visual snapshot of data to quickly grasp and use it. This paper identifies five challenges in presenting data and how visual analytics can resolve them. Solutions are suggested to overcome the challenges of: speed, data clarity, data quality, displaying meaningful results, and dealing with outliers.

Game-Changing Analytics: How IT Executives Can Use Analytics to Create Innovation and Business Success

Game-Changing Analytics: How IT Executives Can Use Analytics to Create Innovation and Business Success

Today's competitive advantage requires a deeper understanding of your business, your market and your customers. As an IT executive, you can drive that knowledge transformation. In this white paper, learn how to make decisions as a strategic business leader and three steps to begin an analytics initiative within your enterprise.

Data Visualization Techniques: From Basics to Big Data with SAS Visual Analytics

Data Visualization Techniques: From Basics to Big Data with SAS Visual Analytics

High-performance data visualization turns sophisticated analyses into meaningful graphics, leading to faster and smarter decision making. In this white paper, learn how visual analytics can transform big data, with additional features such as real-time functionality, mobile compatibility, robust applications for technical groups and accessibility for nontechnical users.

Big Data: Lessons from the Leaders

Big Data: Lessons from the Leaders

Financial performance, competitive advantage, operational efficiency, strategic decision making - every business goal can extract value from big data, and the time for doubt or inaction has long passed. In this Economist Intelligence Unit report, in-depth interviews with data pioneers reveal the link between the effective use of big data and the bottom line among other results.

Decision-Driven Data Management: A Strategy for Better Decisions with Better Data

Decision-Driven Data Management: A Strategy for Better Decisions with Better Data

Which came first, the data or the decision? This white paper makes the case for having a decision in mind, then tailoring big data's volume, variety and velocity to achieve business results such as overcoming customer dissatisfaction or creating well-informed strategies in real time.

Informationweek Reports

Research: The Big Data Management Challenge

Research: The Big Data Management Challenge

The challenge of big data is real, but most organizations don't differentiate 'big data' from traditional data, and nearly 90% of respondents to our survey use conventional databases as the primary means of handling data. We'll help you understand what constitutes big data (it's not just size) and the numerous management challenges it poses.