Note to self: Next time I see Thorsten Heins I need to hit him up for some BlackBerry fire decals for my Vespa. With that said Kevin over @CrackBerry made the trip to RIM’s headquarters during their annual shareholders meeting this week. While there he sat down with RIM’s new CMO Frank Boulben and ran into RIM’s CEO Thorsten Heins. It was great to have someone asking the right questions in an interview which resulted in some more details on the launch of BlackBerry 10 and the delay to Q1 of 2013.
Here are some of the highlights:
- The full touchscreen and QWERTY keyboard BlackBerry 10 models will be announced and marketed at the same time
- Heins said the main reason for the delay was to maintain platform stability while integrating new code. This meant consistency between the different components and things like developer API structure
- Heins confirmed that the delay was a 6-8 week shift for the full touchscreen BlackBerry 10 phone
- The QWERTY keyboard BlackBerry 10 device was not delayed by this decision
- full QWERTY BlackBerry 10 model is coming immediately after the full touch model
- Lab Entry and Technical acceptance should start in Q4
- Heins is very confident that BlackBerry 10 will launch in January or February
- Boulben is confident that it is better to launch in Q1 2013 than “no mans land 2012”
- Boulben already has a fully integrated and focused marketing campaign for BlackBerry 10 that he has already presented to the board
I highly recommend heading over to CrackBerry and catching the whole interview. Boulben explains the main reason that the end of the year would not have worked for RIM since the planning would have to be ready for September to roll out correctly. Carriers even reached out to Boulben and told him to get more attention in Q1. Boulben also explains why RIM is hitting the full touchscreen before the QWERTY model due to that being exactly where RIM is feeling the most pain.
