Smartphone users in India may have to wait till the end of this month for the launch of the new BlackBerry, but it has already managed to create a lot of pre-launch buzz in the country.
This was largely because BlackBerry, formerly known as Research In Motion Ltd., reached out to a large number of software applications developers in India last year to create a basket of applications tailored to global and local needs.
Starting mid-last year, the company held a series of workshops across the country to help developers understand the new device and operating system, Annie Mathew, BlackBerry’s director for developer alliances and business development in India, told India Real Time.
Over the last two-and-a-half years, the number of BlackBerry app developers in India has jumped ten-fold to 40,000, Ms. Mathew says. By 2015, a third of the world’s BlackBerry app developer community will be based out of India, she adds, up from about 25% now.
India is the eighteenth largest market for BlackBerry in July-September, behind mature markets like the U.K., the U.S. and Canada, data from Canalys showed.
The Waterloo, Ontario-based company last month unveiled two new phones–a touch-screen device called the Z10 and a device with a physical keyboard called the Q10–in the U.S. BlackBerry will launch the Z10 smartphone in India by the end of this month, a person familiar with the matter told India Real Time.
India is among the key markets for BlackBerry in Asia. With rising Internet and mobile penetration, the sales of smartphones that can be used to browse the Internet, access emails and play videos is set to grow exponentially over several years, say analysts.
BlackBerry has made some strides here expanding its market from business types that have been the core of BlackBerry users to college-age young people.
But it remains a small part of the market. According to mobile research firm Canalys Google's Android operating system commanded 80% of all smartphone shipments to India by software platform between July and September, the latest available data.
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