BlackBerry just got some more bad news regarding its flagship Z10 smartphone as Verizon, AT&T, and Best Buy cut the price due to weak sales.
The Canadian company had some bad news in the last couple of weeks. It posted a dismal Q2 earnings report, only sold 2.7 million BlackBerry Z10 and Q10 smartphones, and cancelled its plans to bring its latest BlackBerry 10 (BB10) operating system to its PlayBook tablet. Things have just gotten worse for BlackBerry as it's getting ready to launch its next flagship A10 smartphone.
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that AT&T and Best Buy have both cut the price of the BlackBerry Z10 from $199 to $49, effective immediately. Verizon has also announced that it has slashed the price of the Z10 from $199 to $99 with a new 2-year contract. T-Mobile is the only other major U.S. carrier to offer the Z10 and is expected to cut the price of the smartphone in the near future. Sprint passed on offering the Z10 to its customers and just recently launched the QWERTY-equipped Q10 along with AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile. It's unclear whether the Q10 will see a price cut as well.
The publication claims that AT&T and Best Buy slashed the price of the Z10 by a whopping 75 percent due to weak sales, hoping that the lower $49 price tag could ignite sales of the smartphone. Verizon has apparently seen weak sales of the handset as well and is trying to attract customers by applying its own discount. While price drops on smartphones are common practice, this is not the case for the Z10, which debuted in late March for $199. It's only more confirmation that the smartphone is not selling well.
The BlackBerry Z10 features the latest BlackBerry 10 OS, a 4.2-inch IPS display with a resolution of 1280 x 768 and a pixel density of 356 pixels per inch (ppi). The all-touch smartphone is powered by a 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor with an Adreno 225 GPU, sports 16GB of internal storage, 2GB of RAM, an 8-megapixel rear camera, a 2-megapixel front camera, 4G LTE radio, Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, NFC, A-GPS with geo-tagging, microSD expansion slot with support for up to 64GB cards and a removable 1,800mAh battery.
Those interested in the discounted BlackBerry Z10 can now find it at Best Buy for a far more affordable price tag. The retailer is offering both the AT&T and Verizon models for $49.99 in stores and online with a new 2-year contract, which is a better deal over Verizon's $99 price tag.
