Why bother starting a race you have no chance of winning?
[aditude-amp id="flyingcarpet" targeting='{"env":"staging","page_type":"article","post_id":618710,"post_type":"story","post_chan":"none","tags":null,"ai":false,"category":"none","all_categories":"mobile,","session":"D"}']That’s BlackBerry’s thinking when it comes to Japan, which may never see BlackBerry’s new phones.
“Japan is not a major market for BlackBerry and we have no plans to launch BlackBerry 10 devices there at this time,” a BlackBerry spokesperson said in a statement to AllThingsD.
AI Weekly
The must-read newsletter for AI and Big Data industry written by Khari Johnson, Kyle Wiggers, and Seth Colaner.
Included with VentureBeat Insider and VentureBeat VIP memberships.
The confirmation comes as the BlackBerry’s Japanese market share has shrunk from 5 percent to 0.3 percent — a woefully bad piece of the pie. BlackBerry, it seems, doesn’t have much faith that it can fix the situation, so it’s giving up on Japan entirely — at least for now.
Besides sales, the other concern is the cost of translating BlackBerry 10, which are too high for BlackBerry to justify investing in, reports Japan’s Nikkei. I don’t particularly buy that explanation and something tells me BlackBerry would feel a bit different had its new phones actually stood a chance in Japan to begin with.
Fortunately, BlackBerry says that it will continue to offer support to existing BlackBerry owners, which certainly means a lot to the three or so Japanese people who still use BlackBerrys.
VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Learn More