RIYADH: BlackBerry hosted an exclusive media event yesterday to celebrate the success of the BlackBerry 10 platform and the BlackBerry Z10 smartphone which has now been launched in the Kingdom .
“Based on the re-designed, re-engineered and re-invented BlackBerry 10 platform, this smartphone gives customers a powerful and unique new mobile computing experience by constantly adapting to their needs,” Khaled Kefel, senior country director, Saudi Arabia, for BlackBerry told newsmen.
Kefel described The BlackBerry Z10 smartphone as the fastest and most advanced BlackBerry smartphone yet,which offers customers a smarter experience that continuously adapts to their needs.
“The Kingdom is driving innovation in the region and together with the government and our carrier partners we continue to support this growth,” he said.
“Our commitment to the Kingdom extends from ensuring that our latest smartphone like the BlackBerry Z10 is available for customers here, to providing local entrepreneurs with training and resources to help them achieve success,” he added.
BlackBerry customers will also have access to over 70,000 apps on BlackBerry World. Arabic apps available for customers in the Kingdom include MBC, Al-Arabiya news service, Sharq Al-Awsat, Sayidaty, Holy Qur’an, Anghami music services and Kitabi Arabic eBooks. Furthering their commitment to local developer partners,
The BlackBerry Z10 is available in the Kingdom through carrier partners and leading retail outlets.
The unsubsidized pricing of the BlackBerry Z10 is SAR 2,599.
The new device was launched globally in late January simultaneously in New York, Toronto, London, Paris, Dubai, and Johannesburg.
The BlackBerry Z10 (all-touch) offers a faster, smarter and smoother experience than any other previous edition of BlackBerry.
Kefel said 56 percent of mobile phones sold in the Kingdom are smartphones.
In December, Saudi-based Luxury Events and Canadian company Research in Motion (RIM), makers of BlackBerry, signed an agreement in Riyadh that allowed them to tap into a wider market in the Kingdom.
During the global launch, it was announced that that RIM has been renamed as BlackBerry.
There are 79 million customers of BB in the globe and many of whom are from the Middle East and the region remains important to BB’s overall business.
The ever present BlackBerry Hub, which is a single place to manage all conversations whether personal or work e-mail, BBM messages, social media updates or notifications, and the ability to “peek” into the BlackBerry Hub from anywhere in the globe,” a Blackberry official ,who made a presentation said.
He said BlackBerry Flow, where the BlackBerry 10 experience excels by enabling features and apps to flow seamlessly together, helping you complete the task at hand effortlessly and efficiently. For example, he said: “One can tap on an attendee listed for a meeting to see one’s latest tweet or LinkedIn profile. Or tap the thumbnail of a picture you just took to launch the Picture editor and quickly apply a transformation or filter, then instantly share it with your contacts. Its keyboard that understands and adapts to one, that learns what words one use and how one use them, then offers them up to so one can type faster and more accurately.”
BBM (BlackBerry Messenger), which allows users to share things with the people that matter to you in an instant. BBM in BlackBerry 10 introduces the ability to share your screen with another BlackBerry 10 contact. BlackBerry Balance technology, which elegantly separates and secures work applications and data from personal content on BlackBerry devices.
Time Shift, an astonishing camera feature that lets you capture a group shot where everyone is smiling with their eyes wide open.
Story Maker, which lets people bring a collection of photos and videos together, along with music and effects, to produce an HD movie that you can instantly share.
The new BlackBerry 10 browser, which sets the industry benchmark for HTML5 support on smartphones, is incredibly fast. Scrolling or zooming is fluid and responsive.
The browser includes many advanced features, supports multiple tabs, lets you browse sites privately, includes a reader mode, and integrates with the platform for easily sharing content.
BlackBerry Remember, which combines memos, tasks and much more into a single experience. It helps you organize and manage information you have on your smartphone around projects or ideas, letting you collect content such as websites, e-mails, photos, documents, and other files, and then like a To-Do list, lets you create tasks, assign due dates, and track your progress.
BlackBerry Z10 ‘boon for Saudi entrepreneurs’
