Yesterday we showed you a video of users in Indonesia queuing up to buy the BlackBerry Z3, indicating that sales were off to a good start. However, it would appear that zooming in on a queue in a video can be be pretty deceptive.
According to the Economic Times, only around 50 people queued up,
only around 50 people queued up ahead of the phone going on sale in the main launch for customers at an upmarket shopping mall in west Jakarta.
This is in stark contrast to the huge crowds that flocked to previous launch events for BlackBerry’s in Indonesia. Ahead of the launch, retailers had pointed to healthy online pre-orders.
As the picture above shows, BlackBerry went all out on their local branding.
The BlackBerry Z3 is a crucial device in so many ways to BlackBerry and yet they really seems to have played it down. In a bewildering move, they decided to announce that they were opening up the BlackBerry 10 OS to other MDM providers on the same day. An announcement that completely overshadowed the BlackBerry Z3 launch.
Whether this was deliberate, or just lousy marketing is a matter of opinion, and when it comes to BlackBerry, opinions are certainly divided.
What is clear is that it is far too early to judge the success or failure of the BlackBerry Z3. It will take a few months at least for any clear picture to appear.
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