BlackBerry Z10 South Africa price point revealed

Slootvreter said:
Of all my friends who have Blackberrys, only one has gone iPhone and another one Nokia. The rest of them are all waiting for BB10. Most BB users are not tech savvy or clued up on the cellphone markets, they are happy with their current BBs and cannot wait for the new ones.
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The problem with this mindset is that BB10 is nothing like BB7. I'm not sure what they expect to find familiar or comforting in BB10, if they're just being brand loyalists then they've done themselves a massive disservice by not shopping around.

Of all my friends that have had BB's, and there have been a lot, only a single user remains because they're in a contract, and they have no interest in BB10, will be Android or WP8 for them. Whatsapp is what made BB disposable to them - makes BBM less of a must-have feature.
 
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elvis_presley said:
The problem with this mindset is that BB10 is nothing like BB7. I'm not sure what they expect to find familiar or comforting in BB10, if they're just being brand loyalists then they've done themselves a massive disservice by not shopping around.
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If they are happy with the BB10, and BBM still works like it does now, what disservice could they possibly have done themselves?

EDIT: BBM and WhatsApp is what is mostly used, Most people don't download gigabytes of data with their BBs.
 
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Slootvreter said:
If they are happy with the BB10, and BBM still works like it does now, what disservice could they possibly have done themselves?

EDIT: BBM and WhatsApp is what is mostly used, Most people don't download gigabytes of data with their BBs.
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"If they are happy with BB10"? Well, they aren't. Cos they haven't got it yet. That's the whole point. They're buying it on faith assuming they'll be happy with BB10 because they like BB7. They haven't checked out the competition. Brand Loyalty is the most sure-fire way to miss better options that come on the market.

If they're used to the way the UI and workflow of getting stuff done on BB7, it all changes. I can understand people blindly buying the next iPhone or Android phone and being happy because it's an incremental, predictable upgrade. BB7 users are going to get BB10 and say WTF is this? It's nothing like my old phone. I'm not saying it should be, the fact is, it's not. By accounts of every review I've read, it's AT BEST on a par with other touch-based mobile OSes.

BBM is fast becoming a non-issue - with BB losing marketshare so fast, BB7 users have been forced to adopt Whatsapp to stay in touch with their friends.
 
elvis_presley said:
"If they are happy with BB10"? Well, they aren't. Cos they haven't got it yet. That's the whole point. They're buying it on faith assuming they'll be happy with BB10 because they like BB7. They haven't checked out the competition. Brand Loyalty is the most sure-fire way to miss better options that come on the market.

If they're used to the way the UI and workflow of getting stuff done on BB7, it all changes. I can understand people blindly buying the next iPhone or Android phone and being happy because it's an incremental, predictable upgrade. BB7 users are going to get BB10 and say WTF is this? It's nothing like my old phone. I'm not saying it should be, the fact is, it's not. By accounts of every review I've read, it's AT BEST on a par with other touch-based mobile OSes.

BBM is fast becoming a non-issue - with BB losing marketshare so fast, BB7 users have been forced to adopt Whatsapp to stay in touch with their friends.
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I meant what if they get it and they are happy? How have they done themselves a disservice? The way that it looks now, BBM is not becoming redundant. People still use it just as often as they did before. WhatsApp just also joined the choir of Instant Messengers, enabling BB users to use WhatsApp to send messages to Non-BB users, instead of SMSing them.
 
Slootvreter said:
I meant what if they get it and they are happy? How have they done themselves a disservice?
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Well this is different to what you said before, which was "they are happy with their current BBs and cannot wait for the new ones". Obviously if they're happy with it 3 months from now, then good for them. But you said they weren't getting other other OSes because they wanted BB10 because they liked BB7.

Slootvreter said:
The way that it looks now, BBM is not becoming redundant. People still use it just as often as they did before. WhatsApp just also joined the choir of Instant Messengers, enabling BB users to use WhatsApp to send messages to Non-BB users, instead of SMSing them.
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I didn't say redundant. It'll always be used by BB users. What I said is that it's a non-issue as a selling point to buy a Blackberry phone. Before it was a valid reason to get a BB. Nowdays it's not. In years gone by I know many, many people who bought BB just to get in on the little BBM social circle of their friends. Those days are gone.
 
elvis_presley said:
I didn't say redundant. It'll always be used by BB users. What I said is that it's a non-issue as a selling point to buy a Blackberry phone. Before it was a valid reason to get a BB. Nowdays it's not. In years gone by I know many, many people who bought BB just to get in on the little BBM social circle of their friends. Those days are gone.
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So BB releases a phone with specs on par with the iPhone 5, and it includes BBM....sounds good to me ;)
 
Slootvreter said:
So BB releases a phone with specs on par with the iPhone 5, and it includes BBM....sounds good to me ;)
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Of course it sounds good. I hope it is really good. But BBM is no reason to go to it. That's a non-issue in choosing this phone. It's a direct competitor to Android/iOS/WP8 now. You have to compare it to that, and make your decision based on those merits. Any comparisons/brand-loyaly to BB7 are a waste of time and not a reason to buy it. That was the ONLY reason you gave for your friends' upgrades.

I think a lot of early adopters are going to get burned. They've tried to bring their unified inbox/notification thing across, and it's just not suited to smartphones, which end up causing information overload in a centralised place. BB have been downright dishonest and slimey in trying to talk up their app store. The reality is they're launching with around 1000 native BB10 apps, and 70,000 ported/2nd rate apps.

I'm sure BB10 will be nice, but I believe that there's 6-12 months before it becomes a solid, safe platform to migrate to.
 
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elvis_presley said:
Of course it sounds good. I hope it is really good. But BBM is no reason to go to it. That's a non-issue in choosing this phone. It's a direct competitor to Android/iOS/WP8 now. You have to compare it to that, and make your decision based on those merits. Any comparisons/brand-loyaly to BB7 are a waste of time and not a reason to buy it. That was the ONLY reason you gave for your friends' upgrades.
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BBM is NOT a non-issue when choosing this phone. Without it, many current BB users won't choose it. And as for BB10 being a competitor to other phones in it's class, that's only all the more reason for current BB fans to get one.

Remember, I have a GS3, I'm not a BB fan myself, but this is the way my friends see it. They have a high-spec phone that can use BBM and WhatsApp. And apps....pfft. Apps for all platforms are for the biggest part pretty much useless and downright bull****.

My guess is that the BB10 will not be a disappointment. But we will have to wait and see.
 
elvis_presley said:
But BBM is no reason to go to it. That's a non-issue in choosing this phone.
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Actually its a huge issue in choosing this phone I know MANY people that wont touch any other phone with a barge pole because they would be out of contact with their bbm contacts.I had an iphone 5 and when I decided i don't want it and I was going to get an s3 instead i offered it to my wife,she was super excited and all over the phone until she realized she wouldn't have bbm at which point in time she handed it back to me and said shes going to stick to her 9900.

So yes I'll be upgrading her to a z10 when they become available since she really wants a compact modern smartphone(s3 is too big for her) but needs BBM.

The vast majority of people in SA use blackberries and hence the social circles around bbm are far larger than whatsapp or any other social networking service by a huge margin.This phone at least here in South Africa will be way bigger than the ios and android counterparts would like it to be.It will definitely be a hit.
 
falcon786 said:
The vast majority of people in SA use blackberries and hence the social circles around bbm are far larger than whatsapp or any other social networking service by a huge margin.This phone at least here in South Africa will be way bigger than the ios and android counterparts would like it to be.It will definitely be a hit.
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I would have agreed with this 6-12 months ago, but things have changed. WhatsApp has really taken off in ZA in the past few months, all the research shows. And you'd be surprised how big Facebook messenger is. I'd wager it's bigger than even WhatsApp in South Africa. Basically, the users are migrating to platform agnostic IM.

I concur that a minority of tech-dumb users will buy BB just for BBM because they really don't know any better. Most of my wife's friends migrated from BB to Android or iOS, and she just uses WhatsApp now. BBM certainly has momentum, and that's why BB is talking it up so much as a selling point.

Edit: I never said that people wouldn't buy phones because of BBM. I stated it wasn't a valid reason to do so, because of other rising, more prolific IM's. The BB marketing machine will keep driving home the perceived BBM lock-in, and probably get a lot of mileage out of it. They'll convince people they NEED it as there's nothing else like it in the world... when really, there is.
 
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elvis_presley said:
I would have agreed with this 6-12 months ago, but things have changed. WhatsApp has really taken off in ZA in the past few months, all the research shows. And you'd be surprised how big Facebook messenger is. I'd wager it's bigger than even WhatsApp in South Africa. Basically, the users are migrating to platform agnostic IM.

I concur that a minority of tech-dumb users will buy BB just for BBM because they really don't know any better. Most of my wife's friends migrated from BB to Android or iOS, and she just uses WhatsApp now. BBM certainly has momentum, and that's why BB is talking it up so much as a selling point.

Edit: I never said that people wouldn't buy phones because of BBM. I stated it wasn't a valid reason to do so, because of other rising, more prolific IM's. The BB marketing machine will keep driving home the perceived BBM lock-in, and probably get a lot of mileage out of it. They'll convince people they NEED it as there's nothing else like it in the world... when really, there is.
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Actually whatsapp doesn't quite have as nice a feel as bbm and it doesn't have read reports,I use both since I have an s3 as my main phone and a bb for bbm and honestly bbm is better IMO.Even the smileys on whatsapp ar ea bit irritating but ok thats nitpicking.

Now that the z10 with os10 brings the modern smartphone experience to bb i can actually see less people going over to ios or android than ever before in SA.
 
falcon786 said:
Now that the z10 with os10 brings the modern smartphone experience to bb i can actually see less people going over to ios or android than ever before in SA.
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Okay, you're more optimistic than me then. I'd be flabbergasted if they keep even half their users over the 2-year contract cycle. With the operators pushing Android phones so hard (that's how this game works, they push the phones with the most profit in it for them), and Samsung being so aggressive with prices, I'd put money on Samsung being the big winner out of all this.

We've been talking so much about BBM, one thing that nobody has mentioned is that this year's BB10 devices will cost over twice as much as the most common BB7 devices. For the majority of the BB7 market, BB10 isn't even an option. They can't even consider it. That's a possible opportunity for Windows Phone with the excellent entry-level devices it has, with even cheaper ones coming (<R2k Huawei 4Afrika for example). BB7 is GOING to bleed a lot of its users to mainly Android and some to WP8 based on price alone. To keep their marketshare up, they need to capture current Android/iOS users. These people don't care about BBM. Not in the slightest.
 
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There is a 'budget' model BB10 on its way that noone speaks of just yet.. the X10 or N10 (who knows)
http://n4bb.com/exclusive-blackberry-x10-series-clear-photos/
http://n4bb.com/hot-blackberry-n10-renders-make-salivate/
xlarge-5-300x175.jpg


Naysayers, what else is so crap about BB10 ? It's just a phone but let's all admit it like men, these guys came out and surprised the crap out of you because just like you were all over Iphone 2 years ago, then moved to S3 quietly.. the sames happened again. If you pride yourself on being into technology you should remain a little more device agnostic and open minded. You lost out on watching this product grow over the last year or so cos you were spending all your time in Google Play. In essence you've defined yourself as a follower. Welcome.
 
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Blackberry is a dead market. When people start to realise that there are far better smartphones on the market that offer even more, then we shall see how long blackberry will last.
 
elvis_presley said:
To keep their marketshare up, they need to capture current Android/iOS users. These people don't care about BBM. Not in the slightest.
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They already have the market share in SA they just have to retain it and with OS10 phones they wont be bleeding like they were last year.

Yes in other markets like USA and UK etc they need to win over android and ios users but it seems they are selling quite well in the UK anyway.So its looking good for BB atm.
 
falcon786 said:
They already have the market share in SA they just have to retain it and with OS10 phones they wont be bleeding like they were last year.
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What part of "keep their marketshare up" didn't you understand? You just repeated me.

falcon786 said:
Yes in other markets like USA and UK etc they need to win over android and ios users but it seems they are selling quite well in the UK anyway.So its looking good for BB atm.
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Nope, you're dead wrong. The majority of BB7 phones in ZA are cheap. BB10 is expensive. Different markets.
 
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