BlackBerry lost $84 million and 4 million subscribers during the May quarter despite the launch of the highly anticipated BlackBerry Q10 smartphone. The Q10 was BlackBerry’s first BlackBerry 10 phone equipped with a full QWERTY keyboard and industry watchers were expecting pent-up demand among BlackBerry loyalists and enterprise users to give the vendor a boost. The company’s struggles continued, however, and it has since announced that it is exploring a sale and other options to reverse course. In the meantime, additional carrier support is never a bad thing and Sprint on Monday announced the upcoming launch of BlackBerry’s flagship Q10 smartphone. Sprint’s version of the phone will become available this coming Friday, August 30th, and it will cost $199.99 on contract. The carrier’s full press release follows below.
BlackBerry Q10 Smartphone Available from Sprint Aug. 30 for $199.99
OVERLAND PARK, Kan. – Aug. 26, 2013 – The first 4G LTE BlackBerry® 10 smartphone from Sprint, the BlackBerry® Q10 smartphone, will be available Friday, Aug. 30, in direct ship sales channels, including Sprint Stores, Business Sales, Web Sales and Telesales at 1-800-SPRINT1, for $199.99 (excludes taxes and surcharges) with a new line or eligible upgrade and two-year service agreement.
“Our customers have anxiously awaited the arrival of the BlackBerry Q10 smartphone,” said David Owens, vice president-Product Development, Sprint. “Its best-in-class physical keyboard, productivity features, enhanced security capabilities and apps make it easy to be productive at work and connected to friends and family after hours. With the Sprint Unlimited, My Way and My All-in rate plans, our customers will be able to use the BlackBerry Q10 smartphone as it was intended, without worrying about silly data caps or overages.”
The BlackBerry Q10 smartphone customers who sign up for Sprint’s new Unlimited, My WaySM plan or My All-inSM plan are eligible for The Sprint Unlimited Guarantee. The Sprint Unlimited Guarantee gives customers unlimited talk (calls to any wireline or mobile phone), text and data while on the Sprint network for the life of the line of service1.
The new Unlimited, My Way rate plan features unlimited talk, text and data while on the Sprint network for as little as $80 per month (excludes taxes and surcharges). With the Unlimited, My Way plan, Sprint customers can also customize their wireless plan to meet their family’s needs, including mixing smartphones and basic phones, selecting their data options, and adding up to 10 lines all on the same account.
Sprint customers will see significant yearly savings compared to AT&T and Verizon with the new Unlimited, My Way plan. Customers can save $360 per year versus Verizon’s and AT&T’s comparable plan with only 4GB of data2.
Additionally, Sprint is offering smartphone customers the My All-in plan with unlimited talk, text and data while on the Sprint network and 5GB mobile hotspot usage for $110 per month (excludes taxes and surcharges)3.
For those customers wanting to use their BlackBerry Q10 smartphone from Sprint at work, the BlackBerry Q10 smartphone works with the new BlackBerry® Enterprise Service 10 introduced earlier this year. It provides advanced Corporate-level Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) for Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) programs and Regulated-level EMM controls and settings for enterprise customers in government and other industries that require an advanced level of security, control and logging.
Built with precision and offering premium performance in a signature design, the BlackBerry Q10 smartphone combines BlackBerry’s best physical keyboard and a touchscreen with the power of the BlackBerry 10 platform to help you communicate and collaborate faster and more efficiently. The BlackBerry Q10 smartphone includes advanced hardware, communications and multimedia features, and provides long battery life that lets you confidently stay ahead and take action all day long.
The BlackBerry Q10 smartphone features a 1.5GHz dual-core processor, 2GB RAM, 16GB memory and microSD memory card slot that supports up to 32GB memory cards. It also offers a 3.1-inch Super AMOLED touchscreen display with capacitive multitouch navigation and four-row, full QWERTY keyboard.
Continuing the BlackBerry tradition of long battery life, the BlackBerry Q10 smartphone boasts a removable 2,100mAh lithium-ion battery with up to 12 hours talk time on the Sprint network. It also offers an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera with 1080p HD video recording and 2-megapixel 720p HD front-facing camera.
Additional key features include:
- international roaming
- Wi-Fi® (Dual Band 802.11 a/b/g/n)
- 3G/4G LTE mobile hotspot capability supporting up to five users simultaneously
- Near Field Communication (NFC)
- Bluetooth® 4.0 Low Energy
- integrated speaker
- three microphones with noise reduction
The re-designed, re-engineered and re-invented BlackBerry 10 platform offers a powerful and unique new mobile computing experience. It gives you a faster and smarter experience that continuously adapts to your needs. Every feature, every gesture, and every detail is designed to keep you moving and includes advancements such as:
- The ever-present BlackBerry® Hub, which brings all your conversations together in one easy-to-manage place that you can access at any time from any app with a simple “peek,” so you’re always only one swipe away from what matters to you.
- BlackBerry® Balance™ technology, which elegantly separates and secures work applications and data from personal content, protecting what’s important to you and the business you work for.
- BBM™, which lets you share things with the people that matter to you in an instant. BBM in BlackBerry 10 includes voice calling and video chat and lets you share your screen with another BlackBerry 10 contact.
- BlackBerry® Remember, which helps you tackle tasks quickly with a new way to collect, organize and action all the information sitting in different places across your smartphone.
Sprint continues to bring a better wireless experience to more customers across the country as it builds out its all-new 3G and 4G LTE network and is projected to provide LTE to 200 million people by the end of 2013. For the most up-to-date details on Sprint 4G LTE, visit http://www.sprint.com/network. Customers are also encouraged to check http://www.sprint.com/coverage often because the maps are updated when coverage is expanded.
