Full-Touch BlackBerry 10 in March, QWERTY Devices in June

Canadian mobile phone maker Research In Motion is once again said to be set to bring its first BlackBerry 10 devices to shelves only in March next year, although it will make them official at the end of January.

The company has already confirmed plans to officially launch the BlackBerry 10 platform and handsets running under it on January 30, 2013, yet availability will occur only a few months later, analysts believe. According to Boston-based research firm Detwiler Fenton, cited by Forbes, the first full-touch BlackBerry 10 devices will land in the United States only in March next year. Furthermore, the firm notes that QWERTY-enabled BB10 smartphones from RIM will not be launched before June next year. The research firm notes that RIM’s first quarter of the next year will not show impressive figures, although the company will make the new mobile operating system official. The second quarter is expected to be better, but the availability of QWERTY-based BB10 devices only in June is expected to affect sales in the timeframe as well.

“It’s our opinion RIM will ship approximately 400,000 BB10 units in the February quarter and 2.2 million to 2.5 million units in the May quarter,” the firm reportedly said in a research note to clients. The first BlackBerry 10 devices are expected to make their debut in the US only on AT&T and T-Mobile in March, while being set to land at Sprint and Verizon in May. At the same time, the research firm claims that RIM’s focus on the high-end of the market with its new devices will hurt sales. RIM is also said to be negatively impacted by the lack of interest from developers towards its new mobile platform. BlackBerry is currently on the fourth position when it comes to developers’ interest, the firm notes.

Earlier this week, IDC projected that Microsoft’s Windows Phone operating system might be able to overtake the BlackBerry platform on the smartphone market to become the third largest mobile OS in the world.

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Image credits to RIM

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