Lackluster Start for BlackBerry\'s New Phone in Canada

OTTAWA â€" Tuesday’s sales introduction of the first phone using the new BlackBerry operating system was a subdued event.

When the Bell Canada store in the Rideau Centre, an upmarket shopping mall and transit hub in the city’s downtown, opened its doors at 8:30 a.m., only seven customers entered. Five became some of the first North Americans to buy the BlackBerry Z10 phone, which is critical to the revival of the Canadian company, now called BlackBerry but known as Research In Motion until last week. One of the early arrivals, who declined to discuss his shopping, appeared to purchase a Samsung smartphone while a woman left empty-handed after 10 minutes.

The underwhelming sales reception at the Rideau Cetre’s Bell store was repeated not just later at competing outlets in the mall but throughout BlackBerry’s homeland. Rogers Communications, Bell and Telus, the country’s three major carriers, declined to provide specific opening-day sales numbers. But several news outlets reported a similar absence of lines or, in some cases even customers, at wireless carrier and cellphone stores across Canada.

Rogers invited 25 people to its head office in Toronto to receive their Z10 phones from Thorsten Heins, the president and chief executive of BlackBerry.

Michelle Kelly, a spokeswoman for Rogers, which was the first carrier in the world to offer BlackBerry service, said advance orders, which the company began accepting in December, measured in the “thousands.”

She added: “We’ve seen great interest in Bla! ckBerry 10 from our customer base.”

The sluggish reception in Canada came despite intense media coverage of the BlackBerry 10 last week. With the demise of Nortel Networks, BlackBerry became Canada’s pre-eminent technology company and one of Canada’s most prominent corporations in general. Bell also ran extensive advertising for the Z10  on Tuesday, including multipage newspaper ads.

The BlackBerry Z10 will not be in stores in the United States until an unspecified point in March.

All three major Canadian carriers are charging $150 for the Z10 if purchasers commit to a three-year contract, the standard term for a subsidized phone in Canada. That is $30 less tha the cost of a subsidized iPhone 5 in Canada. Telus was also offering a $50 trade-in discount.

Verizon said last week it would charge $200 for the new BlackBerry when it arrived in the United States, with customers having to accept a two-year contract.

Despite a lack of obvious excitement on the streets and in malls, Mr. Heins declared the beginning of Canadian sales a success in a lunch time speech in Toronto.

“The Canadian people were always behind us,” he told the Empire Club of Canada. “It was amazing to see how that support was not fading over time.”

Several of the BlackBerry buyers at the Rideau Centre cited a factor behind their purchases that will not translate to other markets.

“It’s a Canadian company” said Reid M! cCrory, w! ho switched from an iPhone 4S. “Plus I’m really tired of iPhones. I’ve smashed several of them already.”

As a longtime BlackBerry user, Robert Cihelka, a medical software specialist, is the sort of buyer the company anticipated would be among the first BlackBerry Z10 customers.

Mr. Cihelka currently carries separate BlackBerry handsets for work and personal communications. He said he hoped a server feature available to his employer that separates business data and apps from the personal material on the Z10 would allow him to lighten his load.

But he acknowledged that trading a traditional BlackBerry physical keyboard for the virtual one of the Z10 was something of a leap of faith.

“I’ll give it a shot,” he said. “If it’s easy to work with, I’ll stick with it.” Otherwise, Mr. Cihelka said he would be back at the carrier’s store in April after the BlackBerry Q10, a phone with a physical keyboard, was released.

By 10:15 a.m., the Bell store in the mall was mpty except for four clerks as was the Telus shop, a small carrier’s kiosk and several independent electronics shops. At the Apple store,  there was about 20 customers and a half dozen people at the genius bar.