BlackBerry is staging a comeback. Earlier this week, the company introduced a brand-new smartphone called the Passport, which has a massive square screen and a physical QWERTY keyboard. Just two days after the Passport’s release, BlackBerry CEO John Chen told Counterpoint Research analyst Neil Shah, that the company has already sold 200,000 Passport smartphones.
On the same day that Shah tweeted about BlackBerry’s modest success with the Passport, the company issued a blog post, boasting about the QWERTY phablet’s “unprecedented” success on Amazon.com. As it turns out, the BlackBerry Passport became “the number one selling unlocked phone on Amazon.com within hours of launch.”
BlackBerry CEO: 200k pre-orders for BlackBerry Passport in 48 hrs $BBRY
— Neil Shah (@neiltwitz) September 26, 2014
Obviously, sales figures for the Passport pale in comparison to the four million iPhone 6 units Apple sold just 24 hours after the phone went up for preorder. However, given the fact the Passport is a niche device that’s mainly targeted at business users with a fondness for BlackBerry, 200,000 units sold in 48 hours is pretty impressive. If Chen’s enthusiastic desire to share the sales figure is any indication, it seems that BlackBerry is pleased with the response so far.
The true test of the Passport’s popularity remains ahead. If the handset continues to sell well in the following months, it could prove to be a considerable success for BlackBerry, but there is a chance demand will slow once all the die-hard BlackBerry users have put in their order. This could see it quickly become another dud for the struggling firm. Nonetheless, BlackBerry plans to introduce another new smartphone, named the Classic, in the coming months.
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