[red stripe]

Blackberry share - Smartphone Sales in the world's top 8 economies.

USA 1.6%
Urban China 0.1%
Japan 0.3% (abandoned this market last week)
Germany 2.5%
France 7.0%
GB 7.9%
Brazil 2.7%
Italy 3.7%

I think Blackberry should try to survive by concentrating their initial BB10 efforts in Britain, France and Italy. With heavy promotion and low margin prices, they may be able to show they can be relevant again.

Some may think they should concentrate on Indonesia etc where they have a strong market presence but for some reason Blackberry decided to try for the higher priced market first with the Z10 / Q10. These phones will obviously not fly in countries with very low average per capita incomes.

Agree? Or should they keep flushing Superbowl sized money on markets they cannot presently compete in?

I also hope that Blackberry is frantically working on a downmarket version of BB10 to try to compete in Brazil, Russia, India and China. Frankly, the hubris of not doing this first may have doomed them already.

[Apollo_IV]

Prices here in Brazil are absurd even for low-end smartphones such as the Curve models. Sure, the prices dropped a lot in the past two years but trust me when I say this... even low-end BB10 phones will be a complete rip off, making it difficult to become as successful as we want it to be. For reference, the Bold 9900 is selling for a whopping R$2,000, which is around a thousand US dollars. So if people are willing to spend that much money they will surely go for the more established brands, mostly for status. Pathetic, I know...