It’s no secret that BlackBerry‘s entire future rests upon the success of its BB10 operating system. It comes as an early breath of relief for the company, then, that early sales of its Z10 smartphone were actually better than sales for the past year have been for the company according to reports.
This hardly comes as a surprise, though, seeing as how the last year, the company has gone through a number of buyout rumors, has had to lay off a number of its employees, and has had its new OS the subject of a number of skeptical journalists and analysts.
Luckily, early signs point to the BlackBerry 10 gamble paying off for the company. CEO Thorsten Heins says that the Canadian launch two days ago saw sales 50 percent better than any previous BlackBerry launch in BlackBerry’s home turf. Meanwhile, sales were three times that of any previous BlackBerry release in the UK.
“In Canada, yesterday was the best day ever for the first day of a launch of a new BlackBerry smartphone. In fact, it was more than 50% better than any other launch day in our history in Canada,” said Thorsten Heins, President & CEO of BlackBerry. “In the UK, we have seen close to three times our best performance ever for the first week of sales for a BlackBerry smartphone.”
There are no definitive sales numbers, however, so it’s impossible to say whether the new OS will pay off for the company formerly known as Research in Motion in the long haul. Still, the early sales are encouraging and it could possibly mean that the darkest days for BlackBerry are now past.