BlackBerry Z10 Goes on Sale in U.S.

An after-midnight sale at a 24-hour Best Buy store in New York’s Union Square was the site of the American debut of the BlackBerry Z10 smartphone on Friday.

More important for the future of BlackBerry, however, will be how many more American shoppers buy any of the collection of new touch-screen phones based on the company’s new BlackBerry 10 operating system.

The beginning of American sales â€" only for AT&T’s network at the moment â€" came weeks after the new phone went on sale in Britain. But the United States remains the world’s largest and most influential market for high-end smartphones, a fact underscored by BlackBerry’s decision to unveil the new line of phones in New York in late January, which included the Z10 and the Q10.

The United States is also the place where BlackBerry, formerly called Research in Motion, has most profoundly fallen out of favor. Once the dominant smartphone vendor in the United States, BlackBerry held just 2 percent of the market last year, according to IDC.

No data about early sales through AT&T and retailers like Best Buy was available on Friday afternoon. Nor were there any reports of extensive lines to buy the phones in the United States. Before Friday’s unveiling, analysts offered conflicting estimates about the number of Z10s purchasers had ordered online in advance.

“Based on early reports, there has been a good level of interest in the Z10 at our stores, and we’re excited to see how the launch plays out over the next couple of weeks,” Shandra Tollefson, a spokeswoman for Best Buy, said.

BlackBerry had no comment on first-day sales beyond a news release announcing the availability of the phones in the United States.

In a bid to bolster interest, BlackBerry held parties this week in Los Angeles and New York last Monday. It also financed special training for Best Buy employees that will allow each of the company’s  1,400 stores to have a resident BlackBerry 10 expert.

Jeff Haydock, another Best Buy spokesman, said that the retailer expanded its American sales plans for the new BlackBerry after learning that sales at its Canadian subsidiary, where the phone has been available since early February, “had exceeded their expectations.”

AT&T is charging $200 for the Z10 to customers who agree to a two-year contract. Verizon Wireless will start selling the phone, on the same terms, on March 28. T-Mobile USA has said only that it will start selling the phone by the end of the month.

Sprint is waiting for the BlackBerry Q10, which has both a touch screen and a traditional BlackBerry keyboard, but still does not have a release date.

The first statistics about BlackBerry Z10 sales in markets where the phone has been available for several weeks are expected to emerge on Thursday when BlackBerry reports its quarterly financial results. Thorsten Heins, the company’s president and chief executive, has been positive about the new phone’s reception in those countries. But he has generally compared its sales to previous BlackBerry unveilings without offering any numbers.

While all analysts agree that the BlackBerry 10 operating system and its phones are vital to BlackBerry’s return to profitability, their assessments about the likelihood of that happening diverge greatly. A Thomson Reuters survey of 42 securities analysts found that the consensus rating on the company was hold, with only eight analysts giving BlackBerry’s stock a buy or outperform rating.

Earlier this week, Ehud Gelblum of Morgan Stanley upgraded BlackBerry to overweight from underweight. But his investment note was far from an unqualified endorsement of BlackBerry 10’s long-term future. The upgrade, he said, was based on expectations of future sales of older BlackBerry 7 devices and the company’s other legacy businesses. He does, however, believe that BlackBerry 10 sales could be “relatively strong” for the next few months as some of BlackBerry’s 79 million users around the world change phones.

If BlackBerry 10 does turn around BlackBerry’s long-term financial fortunes, Mr. Gelblum said, that does not mean that the BlackBerry will rejoin Apple’s iOS-based iPhone and phones that use Google’s Android operating system as a major player in the United States.

“Note that our more bullish stance is NOT based on a resurgence in share in the U.S., where we believe users are already mostly sold on the Android/iOS duopoly,” Mr. Gelblum wrote.