The much awaited Blackberry Z10 model is finally here. Globally, the new launch has already made waves, with international celebrities Alicia Keys, Robert Rodriguez and Neil Gaiman keying in professional projects via the new Blackberry model and engaging with consumers digitally. Priced at a staggering R43,490, the Blackberry Z10 is no mean buy. It will offer over 70,000 BlackBerry apps and boasts of a robust music catalog. Leading application providers including Disney, Cisco, Foursquare, Skype and Rovio have committed to the platform, and more than 9,000 apps are from Indian developers alone. The names include PVR, HDFC, Tap Cricket, Gold?s Gym, Hungama, Map My India, Zomato, Jet Airways, Myplex, etc. Blackberry Z10 is available at 2000 outlets across 50 cities in India and the company is focused on the experiential part of brand building, says Krishnadeep Baruah, director (marketing), Asia Pacific at Blackberry. He adds that the phone is language agnostic and will support content in eight Indian languages ? Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Devanagiri (Hindi), Gurmukhi (Punjabi), Gujarati, and Bengali. Furthermore, actor Ranbir Kapoor has been signed on as brand ambassador for India. In a freewheeling chat with FE?s Anushree Chandran, Baruah says that the initial response to the Blackberry Z10 in global markets has been encouraging, and there is no reason why the newest star in the portfolio shouldn’t send cash registers ringing in India as well. Edited excerpts.
How important is this launch for Blackberry? Is India a good market for smartphones?
To answer your first question, absolutely, it’s an important launch for us. There were three reasons for bringing in a completely new platform. We wanted to re-design the Blackberry product and give it a new identity, look and feel. We definitely wanted to re-engineer the way in which people experience the product and I think that we have done that with the interface and the software. Third, as a company, we wanted to reinvent ourselves. We were arguably the erstwhile makers of smartphones when they first began. But now we are at a point where we really need to reinvent ourselves in terms of how we look at this space. The Z10 is the first product on the Blackberry10 platform, but soon you’ll see a number of other launches on the same platform. India is one of the fastest growing markets globally and in terms of sheer numbers, smartphones are big. If you were to look at pure smartphones, I think that we are close to 26 million devices for FY2013-14. And that’s slated to grow up to 40 million in the next year. If you were to look at all mobile phones, it’s a 170-180 million device market. Besides the Z10 which is really at the high end of the price spectrum, we have products priced at R10,000.
Will the pricing of Z10 keep consumers away?
I think there is a significant market for entry-level smartphones and there’s no denying it. Which is why we have the Curve series to be able to address that price segment. Having said that, I’ve always maintained that India has a high-end market. If you look at the R30,000-40,000 price spectrum, I think that with new technology, there is a significant market base that needs to be tapped. What we are aiming for with the Blackberry Z10 and the Q10 (to be launched in April) is to try and address the high-end of the spectrum. We aim to drive a lot of aspiration both for the brand and for the Blackberry10 platform.
Could you give any projections in terms of sales? And what’s been the initial response for Blackberry Z10?
Unfortunately, we cannot break it down in numbers because we are also listed in Nasdaq and cannot disclose numbers by geography. But yes, Blackberry Z10 recently launched in Canada, the UK and the Middle East. It also entered South Africa. In the first three launches, we’ve had significant sell-through of the product. We have had the product run out of stock in stores both in Canada and the UK, and followed by the UAE. So obviously there’s a strong pent-up demand for Blackberry Z10. In Asia Pacific, we just announced the launch in Malaysia and Singapore, but the product will be available in stores from early March. Given the encouraging response in other global markets, we can expect as much traction in Asian markets.
Could you tell us about your marketing campaign?
Our marketing campaign around the Z10 Blackberry10 platform began around four months ago with five different phases for the campaign. What we have done is to build through those phases, in order to reach where we are today. We haven’t finished all those phases yet. The first phase is called “Intrigue” where instead of just telling people about the product, we started showing the product. We went to influential bloggers, we went to the media, we met with our developer partners across the world in around 44 countries and we also met certain celebrities. We let them experience the product. They then started talking, especially through social media and the internet about their experiences. That started building up a lot of traction around Blackberry Z10. We used our annual conference in Orlando, and then various Blackberry jam sessions to talk about specific features. That built the intrigue. The second phase was “Educate” where we released a lot more content digitally; we released pictures, product pegs, etc. Phase 3 happened end of January 2013 when we announced our association with three celebrities. This phase was called “Inspire”. We built a project called the “Keep moving” project. We identified three celebrities: Writer Neil Gaiman, movie maker Robert Rodriguez and singer Alicia Keys and gave them a Blackberry Z10. They initiated stories around it.