While it is a well-known fact that BlackBerry is facing trouble in the market, the same scenario seems to be prevailing in India. It would seem that Blackberry is also losing markets like India, which it was dependent on to stage a turn around.
According to the IDC market analysis for the Q3 of 2013, BlackBerry has sold just 68000 handset in the period of July to September of the year 2013 compared to the 1.5 lakh handsets sold in the previous quarter of the same year. Analysing the figures, the sales of the company in India have fallen sharply by nearly 55 percent.
While Blackberry clearly refuted the reports, it did claim that in Q3, there were just two Blackberry handsets in the market, the Z10 and the Q10, both of which were priced above Rs. 40000. The Q5 and Blackberry 9720 are said to have been launched towards the end of the quarter due to which there was an irregularity in the numbers.
Speaking about the market stance of BlackBerry, Manasi Yadav, senior market analyst in IDC, said, “Blackberry has lost its consumer base in India due to the pricing strategy and sluggish marketing. BlackBerry went wrong with the pricing of their new launches. Also, they were lagging behind in terms of aggressiveness and the marketing push required in this dynamic market.
Refuting the figures, Varghese M Thomas, Corporate communications director for India said, “This data is factually incorrect. BlackBerry does not break our overall sales numbers by country, but we can confirm that our sell-out was significantly higher than the number quoted by you. IDC captures sell-in numbers only, and is not a true reflection of actual sales-out to end customers.”
