June 17, 2014: Canadian handset maker BlackBerry is all set to launch its latest ‘Z3’ in India at an aggressive price of Rs.12, 000. Priced at USD 190 globally the device would be powered by the latest BlackBerry 10 operating system. BlackBerry with this sub Rs.12,000 category smartphone is trying to regain the ground which it lost to devices powered by Google’s Android OS and Apple’s iOS.
India has been a hot market for smartphones and according to the latest data released by IDC, the smartphone sales in India grew almost three fold to over 44 million in 2013. The Indian smartphone market is dominated by Samsung, Apple and local firms like Micromax and Karbonn. Samsung is the market leader in India with 35 per cent market share followed by Micromax with 15 per cent. Karbonn has got a market share of 10 per cent, followed by LAVA with 6 per cent and Nokia with 4 per cent.
BlackBerry currently is no where in the picture in Indian smartphone market and by announcing the unveiling of next generation BlackBerry 10 devices on June 25, the company is trying to make its presence felt in the market. At one time BlackBerry in 2012 had a market share of 12.1 per cent in the January-June 2012 period. Z3 from BlackBerry would be the first phone manufactured by Foxconn and features 1.2GhZ dual core processor. It has got a 1.5 GB RAM and 8GB internal memory expandable upto 32 GB.
