Z10 sales start Friday in U.S., but Blackberry's future still far from certain

Computerworld - BlackBerry Z10 sales kick off this Friday in the U.S., but it is still unclear how popular the smartphone and its Q10 cousin running BlackBerry 10 will be, amid a number of contradictory predictions and indicators.

AT&T will put the Z10 on sale for $199.99 and a two-year contract this Friday, followed by Verizon Wireless a week later at the same price.

Less than a week after BlackBerry blogged that an unnamed partner purchased 1 million BlackBerry 10 smartphones, a Gartner analyst on Monday predicted that BlackBerry will achieve less than 5% global market share through 2016.

"Market conditions will make it extremely difficult for BlackBerry to rise above iOS, Android and Windows Phone 8 platforms," blogged Gartner analyst Van Baker.

While calling BlackBerry 10 a "modernized new platform based on touch technology," Baker added, "The question is whether the new platform is sufficient to motivate the buyer to choose BlackBerry over the platforms they know."

Consumers will be key to BB 10's success, meaning that enterprises should wait six months before installing the BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10 for mobile device management to support multiple devices "until it is clear that BB10 has proven successful in the consumer market," Baker said.

Also, while BlackBerry last week said it has 4,200 businesses and government customers testing BB 10 devices with BES 10, it isn't clear how many are motivated to adopt the technology.

In fact, more than a dozen companies have told Computerworld that they are moving off BlackBerry, supporting Baker's point.

"We have determined that BlackBerry is simply no longer a fit as a corporate-issued device and are replacing them with an iPhone or Android," said William Rhodes, director of technology of PowerLine Services in an email. "The determination is based on the historical complexity the device needed in order to integrate within a corporate environment [with a separate BES server], thus driving up IT support costs in maintaining connectivity for BB devices to corporate system."

Rhodes added: "I believe BB is simply too far behind the curve to catch up at this point. As business activities became more consumer-driven or oriented, BB failed to acknowledge and respond to that transactional shift. IPhone is now on its fifth generation, Android appears to be growing strong with its development and releases, Windows has recently revamped its Windows Mobile solution, yet BB is just now releasing flashier products."

Amid questions about the overall popularity and viability of the Z10 or the Q10, questions about the number of BlackBerry World apps were raised again recently, after first surfacing when BlackBerry announced the two products in late January.