Wood pellet exports double
Nearly $500K for car crash
Mounties won't be charged
CRA will get the money: PM
PM tight-lipped on TikTok
Minister defends right to bail
New US rules for airlines 
Historic Trump hearing 
Pig kidney transplant 
Big loss for Boeing 
Metro sales edged higher
Retail sales slip 
Warriors snakebitten in loss
Iginla off to Europe
Rockets ink prospect
Perry teams with Lu Kala
Megan denies harassment
Swift ‘one of the family’
The launch of the new, completely redesigned BlackBerry Z10 was met with little fanfare across Canada today – when compared to Apple’s latest version of their iPhone – and Kelowna was no different.
“I wasn’t really sure what to expect with this,” says Brandon Sparks, a Communications Consultant at Rogers Wireless in Orchard Park Mall.
“When it came to launch day, we were getting a lot of hype on it and BlackBerry deserved that.”
He says there were roughly 10 people lined up outside the store when it opened this morning, and they quickly sold the eight phones in stock. Prior to today's release, they had a number of people calling and asking about the new product.
“It looks like it’s going to be a great device, and a lot different than what people are used to with BlackBerry. I’m seeing a lot of similar features to the Android phones, even more comparable than the iPhone.”
Just down the street at the Telus business store, there was no lineup, but Neil Rodgers says a number of corporations have been anticipating the release.
“I think that’s where the biggest impact is, the corporations where they want to have control over their users. They want to set their restrictions, they want to have an IT department that can push stuff out to phones, so in that regard its been really good and we’ve been seeing a lot of that for the business store.”
He says there is a large order of approximately 100 phones in the queue already, and their other store had sold 15 phones by noon on Tuesday.
“I would say I’m surprised there’s not crazy hype,” admits Rodgers.
“It seems all the hype is focused on Apple because of their insane marketing, they’re very much in the forefront. And even Samsung has come out pretty strong with marketing. BlackBerry really held back on their marketing push and really saved it all utill now.”
He believes many consumers are using the “wait and see approach” before investing in a company that has received so much negative press lately.
“BlackBerry has always been the enterprise kind of device and it became very trendy for everyone for a long while. So I think now they’ve scaled back to the corporations and companies.”
