Baywood and the Blackberry BB10

WATERLOO REGION — Darren Wilson, manager of the Rogers Plus store at Conestoga Mall, didn’t hesitate when asked if Tuesday was busier than normal at his shop. “Oh yeah,” he said emphatically as he glanced at the lineup of 15 to 17 customers snaking away from the Rogers kiosk in the middle of the Waterloo mall around noon.
His sales staff were hopping as they attended to customers surrounding the counter. They were eager to purchase the new BlackBerry Z10 touch-screen phone that went on sale across Canada on Tuesday.
Many outlets across the region were sold out of the new phones as customers snapped up the first versions of the long-awaited device, the make-or-break smartphone that BlackBerry is counting on to reverse its slide in the global market.
The story was the same across the country and in the U.K., where customers couldn’t wait to get their hands on the first new BlackBerry device in several years.
About 40 customers were waiting when the Rogers Plus shop opened at 9 a.m. Tuesday in Conestoga Mall, and there was no slowdown in business right through the lunch hour, Wilson said.
A short distance away at the Bell store, Brad Aitken waited nervously in a lineup about seven deep. His mission: purchase a new Z10.
An employee at the Ontario Teachers Insurance Plan office in Waterloo, he was looking forward to trying out the BlackBerry Balance feature on the new phone, which allows the user to separate work and personal content. A longtime BlackBerry user, his last two smartphones have been BlackBerry handsets, Aitken said. “I’ve always been supportive of BlackBerry. I’m just really excited about the new operating system,” he said. A few minutes later, Aitken had his prize, a new Z10. “I got lucky,” he said triumphantly.
Carriers are selling them for less than $150 with a three-year contract.
Meanwhile, in another section of Conestoga Mall, Jody Pfaff sat at a counter negotiating the purchase of a Z10 at the Best Buy Mobile shop. An employee in the IT department at Home Hardware in St. Jacobs, he left early for lunch to secure one of the devices, drawn by all aspects of the new phone. “The hardware and the software, the flow and the BYOD (bring your own device to work),” he said, ticking off his reasons for wanting a Z10.
Loyalty to a homegrown company was also a factor, saying he was bothered by how the company was bashed in the U.S. media.
For him, BlackBerry Messenger, the company’s proprietary text-messaging feature, was a particular attraction. Recently he pared down his list of 100 BBM contacts to around 70 because it had grown too unwieldy, he said.
Standing behind Pfaff in line was Jairo Moreira, an electronics technician at Christie Digital in Kitchener. He already owns a Samsung Galaxy S3 smartphone, but was looking to pick up a Z10. A previous BlackBerry user, he was willing “to give RIM another chance,” he said. “I like the gestures on it,” Moreira said of the Z10. “The user interface looks nice. It looks like they (BlackBerry) have cleaned up their act.”
Across town at the Best Buy store on Fairway Road in Kitchener, John Lassel wasn’t one of the lucky ones. He arrived shortly after the store opened at 10 a.m. to learn the Z10s were already sold out. All had been snapped up by customers who ordered the devices ahead of the release. “I’m disappointed,” said the president of Baywood Interiors, a Kitchener company that makes wood cabinets for schools, nursing homes and retail stores. “With all the hype of the Super Bowl ads, they should have had boxes and boxes available.” Lassel’s company, which has about 30 employees, has used BlackBerrys for years and has no plans to change.
“I just like supporting BlackBerry. They’re local. They put us on the map,” Lassel said. “I think it’s a fantastic phone. I’ve read all the reviews.”
Inside Fairview Park Mall, Ken Summers found to his dismay that the Z10 was sold out at the Telus store about an hour after opening. He was “a little bit” disappointed, “but I’m willing to be patient,” he said. A retired executive at BMO, he has owned a BlackBerry Bold for almost three years and is eager to try the touch screen, faster browser and new camera on the Z10, he said.
The Z10 has attracted record orders at Canadian wireless carrier BCE Inc. BCE, owner of Bell Mobility, Canada’s No. 2 carrier, said early orders for the Z10 have topped any previous BlackBerry model, while one Carphone Warehouse Group Plc outlet in the U.K., where the phone has been on sale since Jan. 31, sold out of the model in under half an hour.
BlackBerry is counting on a robust start before the Z10 goes on sale in the U.S. in March to help reverse six quarters of declining sales and years of market-share losses to rivals led by iPhone maker Apple Inc.
BlackBerry chief executive officer Thorsten Heins told the BNN business television channel Tuesday that early sales in the United Kingdom and pre-registration results in Canada are encouraging.
“I don’t have the firm number yet, but we also see people migrating from other platforms back to BlackBerry.”
Heins said the BlackBerry’s launch into the United States, the company’s biggest customer base by far, is coming later because of the extensive testing required by the U.S. carriers and the regulatory process. “I’d love to be earlier. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not happy with it, but at the moment it is what it is. What we have said is we’re shipping in the first quarter of 2013 and that’s what we’re doing,” Heins said.
Pierre Ferragu, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein in London, raised his rating on BlackBerry to the equivalent of a buy after getting preliminary sales information from his contacts in the industry. “Initial feedback we have received from distributors on the first days of sales is particularly positive,” he said. “Even if the long-term prospects for the platform are very uncertain, we believe all is in place for BlackBerry 10 to enjoy a great debut.”
BCE’s Bell Mobility site has been taking Z10 reservations since the beginning of January and the device topped all BlackBerry orders even before the Jan. 30 unveiling, Bell spokesperson Mark Langton said. Rogers Communications, the country’s largest wireless carrier, said it has received “thousands” of orders. “We’ve had the reservation system up and running and we’ve seen some pretty good success on that,” Rogers chief executive officer Nadir Mohamed told reporters Tuesday at an event at the company’s flagship Toronto store.
chowitt@therecord.com with files from News services