The BlackBerry Z10 is now selling for $99 at AT&T and Verizon, while
Amazon is selling it at $49. The price drop is aimed at breathing life
into sales for the Canadian company, which lost $84 million in the
most recent quarter.
"Now is the right time to adjust the price," a BlackBerry spokesperson
told the Wall Street Journal. "It's part of life cycle management to
tier the pricing for current devices to make room for the next ones."
That could mean that the company is selling the stock on shelves now
before it launches a second-generation smartphone with the same Z10
DNA. The price cut from the original $199 price just four months ago
isn't a good sign for BlackBerry, formerly known as Research in
Motion.
Thorsten Heins, chief executive of BlackBerry, acknowledged that the
launch of the latest smartphones in the U.S. didn't go as well as it
hoped. BlackBerry also let go its head of U.S. sales, Richard
Piasentin last month. It's an uphill battle for BlackBerry to gain
market share in a field crowded with devices based on Apple's iOS,
Google Android, and Windows Phone.
Kantar Worldpanel, a market researcher, said that in the three months
ending May 2012 that BlackBerry had 4.6 percent market share, compared
to more than 50 percent a few years back.
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