Well according to a report from Bloomberg’s Businessweek, it seems that BlackBerry has managed to sell 200,000 Passport smartphones since its release. BlackBerry’s CEO John Chen confirmed that they did indeed sell out of the phones not just on their website in 6 hours, but they also managed to sell out on Amazon in 10 hours as well.
Also given that they sold out with just 200,000 units, it certainly sounds like Chen is playing it a bit conservatively. We would have expected more units to be prepared, but then again the BlackBerry Passport is a unique device not only in terms of its design, but its keyboard as well which not only offers physical typing, but allows gestures to be performed on it as well.
Also BlackBerry has positioned the Passport to be aimed at the business user, as they have said in the past as the different products they put out have been designed to appeal to different market segments. In any case given the initial success of the Passport, it will be interesting to see how much more of these handsets BlackBerry will be able to sell down the road.