Blackberry Q5 Price Reduced by 20%

Blackberry Q5 prices have now been reduced by 20%, and now will be priced at Rs 19,990. BlackBerry India Director (Distribution) Sameer Bhatia said, "The New Year Bonanza aims at providing a powerful mobile device, with cutting edge BlackBerry 10 OS at an affordable price point to the consumers,"The reduced prices are an attempt to attract more Indian consumers to the Blackberry franchise.


The Blackberry Q5 has a 2GB RAM with 8GB onboard memory and a microSD slot which can be extended up to 32 GB. It uses the cutting edge BlackBerry 10 OS, which is upgradable to v10.1. The Blackberry Q5 comes with a 5MP camera (2592х1944 pixels) with features like Geo-tagging, autofocus & touch focus, image stabilization, LED flash and a 2MP front camera.

Launched in July 2013 for Rs 24,990, the Q5 was BlackBerry’s attempt to bring BB10 to the budget segment, even though it wasn’t really competing with low-cost Androids at that price range. The performance of the phone was under par and it didn’t have much going for it in terms of user experience either. The touch and QWERTY combination is not exactly the right showcase for the OS, which already faced severe criticism for the lack of native apps.

The Canadian firm has been facing stiff competition from other smartphone makers like Apple and Samsung, as sales have declined over the past few months globally.

Besides, it is also betting on apps, including taking its popular messaging service BBM to other operating systems, to rake in additional revenue in the coming months. It also ran an offer for free and discounted apps for its BB10 operating system-run devices -- Q5, Q10, Z10 and Z30 in India.


BlackBerry, in a filing, had disclosed that mounting inventory had cost the company about $1.6 billion in the third quarter and forced it to cancel the launch of two new devices. It said the pile up was mainly on account of unsold BlackBerry 10 devices, which was launched in January last year with much fanfare.