BlackBerry Z10 sales promising: CEO Thorstein Heins

BlackBerry, which has got its Z10 mobile device with a new touchscreen on store shelves in over 20 countries, says was very encouraged by the traction that the smartphone was gaining, Reuters today reported quoting Blackberry chief executive Thorsten Heins.

According to Reuters, the company's Z10, the first in a line of smartphones powered by the new BlackBerry 10 operating system, was on sale in the UK, Canada, Germany, Indonesia, India, the UAE and South Africa, among other countries, with launches scheduled for other countries, Heins said.

A US launch was due later this month.

"The feedback is very encouraging," Heins said at the Communitech Tech Leadership Conference in the company's hometown of Kitchener-Waterloo. "What has been a real surprise for us is that BlackBerry 10 as a platform and product is attracting users that are currently on other platforms."

"We are just five weeks into this. We have just one product out in 21 countries, so it is early indications, but we are encouraged by what we see and hear from our carrier partners," he told an audience of leaders of local technology start-ups.

Declining to give figures of the high end Z10 sales, as the company was in a quiet period ahead of the 28 March release of its fourth-quarter results, Heins said the Z10 had surpassed BlackBerry's expectations in emerging markets like India, where cheaper entry-level devices were typically popular.