BlackBerry announced today that it would be partnering with Foxconn to produce devices going forward, and CEO John Chen revealed a few details about the first fruits of that partnership on the company’s earnings call today.
The first smartphone from Foxconn with BlackBerry branding should arrive in March or April 2014, he says, and be a 3G device based on BlackBerry 10. It’s going to launch in Indonesia first, and Chen says they have another six or seven markets the company has identified for it to spread to later on.
This should help BlackBerry lower its exposure to financial risk, while giving it room to work on its device pipeline in a way that will help it produce better BB10-based devices, Chen offered on the call. That’s likely true, but the key ingredient here will be price. With companies like Motorola aggressively going after emerging markets with devices like the low-cost Moto G, BlackBerry won’t just have to contend with players like Nokia for the growing international market of low- to mid-range smartphone devices.
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