BlackBerry Sales To Cease In Japan

Sometimes when it comes to winning a war, a battle must be lost as one consolidates one’s power base elsewhere. BlackBerry has certainly taken heed of such a strategy, where the Nikkei news agency has recently reported that BlackBerry as a corporation is unable to justify the expense of converting its new BlackBerry 10 operating system into the Japanese language simply because there isn’t a large enough user base to do so, which means Canada-based BlackBerry will be pulling out of the Japan market, and will put a stop to the sales of their smartphones in the Land of the Rising Sun.

I guess it makes plenty of business sense, and shareholders should be happy too, as BlackBerry has been reported to smash company records with figures of strong sales of the BlackBerry Z10 all-touch smartphone in the U.K. and Canada. A measly 0.3% smartphone market share in Japan is not going to cut the mustard, which is a far cry from the 5% that they held during the RIM’s heydays.

Edwin Kee
Categories: Cellphones
Tags: BlackBerry