Prior to the event, UBS analyst Amitabh Passi raised his price target on the stock to $13 from $9.50, but left his neutral rating unchanged — expressing skepticism that BlackBerry can lure many users from competing platforms.
“The Z10 is a good product but likely to mainly appeal to Blackberry loyalists,” he wrote in a note to clients. “We remain skeptical existing iOS and Android users will switch to BB10 in meaningful numbers.”
The event in San Francisco was one of several the company is conducting as it rolls out the new BlackBerry 10 platform, which was officially launched a month ago. BlackBerry, which formerly went under the name Research In Motion Ltd., is working to make the new platform and its associated handsets appeal to both its base of corporate customers as well as consumers.
The latter has become a notable weak point for BlackBerry, as policies known os BYOD (bring your own device) have allowed smartphone users to pick their own devices for the workplace. Many of those have chosen iPhones and Android devices — hurting BlackBerry’s market share.
“Somewhere in the past, we stopped listening a bit,” Piasentin said at the event on Tuesday. “That created a lot of the issues that we have seen over the last 18 months.”
“I want to say, on behalf of everyone at BlackBerry, that those days are over,” he added.
The Q10, which features a QWERTY keypad that is popular with a core base of BlackBerry users, is expected to launch later in the year, though no specific plans have yet been announced by the company.
BlackBerry is pushing hard to revive its once market-leading smartphone brand that has come under intense competitive pressure from Apple’s (US:AAPL) iPhone and a line of devices using Google’s (US:GOOG) Android platform — most notably the Galaxy line from Samsung (KR:005930) .
According to IDC, the BlackBerry platform accounted for about 4.5% of global smartphone shipments in 2012 — down 36% from its market share in the prior year.
The company is also contending with Microsoft (US:MSFT) and its Windows Phone platform, which could build on the strong enterprise base of the flagship Windows operating system and hurt BlackBerry’s hold on this segment. Nokia (US:NOK) is the main handset vendor building Windows Phone devices.
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