BlackBerry Q10 cited to be a commercial failure by retailers

Phones with QWERTY keyboards have always been the strong suite of BlackBerry. Which is why when the company revamped their product portfolio with BB10 and the Z10, they decided to not forgo QWERTY phones altogether and launched the Q10 (and consequently the Q5). Well, it seems that strategy isn't working out so well. According to The Wall Street Journal, who talked to retailers in the US and Canada, the Q10 is an unmitigated failure. There is no demand for the device and the retailers have had to return their stock.

One Canadian retailer even went as far as saying "I think we'd all say that the Q10, the one we all thought was going to be the savior, just hit the ground and died." And this is BlackBerry's home country we are talking about. While this doesn't mean the all-touch Z10 are flying off the shelves things are looking particularly bleak for the keyboard based BlackBerries. Clearly the market for these devices has dwindled in the past and few would now want to waste precious space for a physical keyboard when they could have a large display instead. BlackBerry now needs to rethink their strategy and assess if people really want to buy QWERTY BlackBerries anymore. Or simply BlackBerries, for that matter.

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The next BlackBerry flagship could be called the Z30

So far, we've all been working under the assumption that BlackBerry's next all touchscreen flagship device would be the A10, because the device is part of BlackBerry's so-called "A-series". However, that idea never made all that much sense since BlackBerry has two device options on the market: the Q-series with a physical keyboard and the Z10, which is all touchscreen.
Given that, it makes much more sense that the BlackBerry Aristo is using the letter A for its codename and little more. There is a new theory popping up that the next flagship touchscreen device from BlackBerry could be called the Z30. This makes more sense, because it follows the Z10. But, the name does have its own issues in that it would be skipping over Z20, and going straight to Z30.
If nothing else, the name BlackBerry Z30 makes more sense than A10. There has also been a video render put together on the rumored device, which continues to show off the gestures available in BlackBerry 10 for navigation.

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BlackBerry officially issues the BB10.1 OS Maintenance release

Today, BlackBerry starts seeding a new Maintenance release to its BB 10.1 OS. The update has a version number of v10.1.0.4537 and it’s a bug-and-fixes update that only adds a handful of truly new features.
Back in May, we saw BlackBerry announce the official availability of the BlackBerry 10.1 update to the BlackBerry Z10 smartphone (the Q10 already had it at launch). Now, the company has a second go at this one, refining the user experience and adding some minor new features.
Both the BlackBerry Z10 and Q10 are able to receive the new update over Wi-Fi. Interestingly, the BlackBerry Q5 smartphone is not mentioned in the changelog.
Of course, availability is region-specific and the 10.1 Maintenance release will initially be available only to customers in the Asia Pacific, Canada, and EMEA.
Latin America users will be able to update in 2-3 weeks, while customers in the US will have to wait even longer, until the end of summer.

The most notable new features include:
A new next/previous message navigation gesture;
Two factor authentication for Twitter and LinkedIn;
A search field in BlackBerry Remember; Support for unlock with simple (numeric) passwords such as a PIN;
A new IT policy allows work and personal accounts in the BlackBerry Hub to be separated;
Input support for Simplified and Traditional Chinese;
Input and UI translation for Korean;
BlackBerry World app gets several UI enhancements, including a Wishlist;
Latest versions of the Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn apps.

You can read the full changelog over at BlackBerry’s website as well. Also our fellow tech journalists from CrackBerry.com already have a nice walkthrough of the new stuff on video.

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