Following its official announcement last week, BlackBerry 10 has gone on sale in the UK and is available as a pre-order in Canada, the United Arab Emirates and in China, where its release is imminent. Everyone knows its success is key to the survival of BlackBerry the company, which has recently abandoned its long-standing Research in Motion name, and if early data from sales analysts is to be believed, buyers have already embraced the new OS.
According to analysts at Jefferies, reported by AllThingsD, the pre-order figures are, “solid,” while sales in the UK have been strong enough to see the white Z10 phone sell out. While the white Z10 is an exclusive to Phones4U and could be expected to disappear quite quickly, the black model’s availability has also been described as limited in a number of locations, including nationwide retailer Carphone Warehouse.
Despite this, a check of O2, Vodafone and Phones4U’s websites shows the BlackBerry Z10 as being in stock and ready for delivery. Other online retailers such as Clove Technology, where the Z10 is sold SIM-free, still have the phone listed as a pre-order with an early March delivery date.
Although analysts haven’t committed themselves to a sales figure yet, Jefferies estimates they’re in the region of, “at least several hundred thousand units.” BlackBerry hasn’t commented or released any early figures of its own, and like Microsoft in the early days of Windows Phone, we doubt it will do so for a while. BlackBerry 10 is on limited release at the moment, while the company struggles on with getting the software and hardware approved by U.S. networks, but its strong performance in the UK could be a good omen for things to come.
