Canadian mobile operators BCE, Rogers and Telus start selling the BlackBerry Z10 across the country on 5 February, to be followed by the Q10 model in April. BCE, which started taking pre-registrations for the Z10 at the start of January, told Bloomberg that early orders for the handset were higher than any previous BlackBerry device.
The Z10 reached first place before the end the month, said Mark Langton, a spokesman for BCE's Bell Mobility service. Rogers Communications, said it had received "thousands" of orders and Telus stated that customer response was "very positive". In the UK, where the phone was launched on 31 January, a Carphone Warehouse store sold out in 20 minutes, staff told Bloomberg.
The Z10 goes on sale in the US in March. BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins said in an interview with the Associated Press that he was disappointed in the mid-March US release date. But he said the US carriers have a rigid testing system.
Heins said sales in other countries to date have been "beyond expectations". The white version of the Z10 "is sold out already. The black is hard to stock up again. It's very encouraging". Heins said much of the sales was users moving from other platforms to BlackBerry.
