New Delhi: Within a week of its global release, BlackBerry has launched its unconventional new smartphone dubbed the Passport in India as it embarks on what may be the most critical phase of its long turnaround push.
Priced at Rs 49,990, the BlackBerry Passport is up for pre-order on Amazon India starting today. The phone will remain up for pre-booking on Amazon India till October 10. Customers pre-booking their BlackBerry Passport on Amazon.in would receive a gift card worth Rs 5,000, says BlackBerry.
It will be be available across stores from October 10 for Rs 49,990, BlackBerry India Managing Director Sunil Lalvani said at the launch event.
BlackBerry Passport, which is the size and shape of a closed passport, comes with a 4.5-inch square touchscreen as well as a 3-row keyboard. The Passport comes to market as the phones of BlackBerry's rivals converge on a single profile, with tall, rectangular screens and smooth corners.
BlackBerry Passport comes with 3450 mAh non-removable battery which company said will support up to 14 hours of talktime in 2G network and video playback of up to 11 hours.
The square-shaped handset has 13 megapixel main camera and 2 megapixel camera. The internal storage capacity of the phone is 32 GB and supports 128 GB of external storage.
Users can type on the Passport's keyboard to enter text, or swipe lightly across it to navigate through the phone.
Passport users will be able to download apps from Amazon's app store, previously only available for Android-based phones.
Before Passport, the company's most expensive smartphone was Blackberry Q10 launched for about Rs 45,000 in June last year. The handset is now available in the market at around Rs 19,000 - less than half its launch price.
The company had to reduce price of its handsets as there was a huge inventory pile up due to less of demand of BlackBerry phones sold at premium price. Lalvani said the price of BlackBerry Passport is going to stay because of its high quality components and specifications.
BlackBerry recently concluded a three-year restructuring process, and it is now up to Chief Executive John Chen to prove that the company's new devices and services are capable of generating sustainable new streams of revenue and returning it to profit.
BlackBerry has increasingly lost relevance as a smartphone company in the years since the 2007 launch of Apple's touchscreen iPhone and the 2008 introduction of Google-powered Android phones.
The BlackBerry smartphone, pioneered in 1999, changed the culture by allowing on-the-go business people to access wireless email. Then came a new generation of competing smartphones, and suddenly the BlackBerry looked ancient. Apple first showed that phones can handle much more than email and phone calls with its iPhone. BlackBerry has been hammered by the competition.
(With inputs from agencies)
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