BlackBerry's next flagship phone: the all-touchscreen A10
Sprint has already committed to selling the A10, which is the successor to the Z10, in November, CNET has learned. — BlackBerry's next flagship smartphone, the all-touchscreen BlackBerry A10, will launch during the holidays, CNET has learned.
Context & Ripple Effects
The A10 report lands mid-pivot for BlackBerry: the Z10 was only pictured publicly in December 2012 (first BlackBerry 10 handset photos), and the Q10 keyboard model is just now reaching Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile this summer (three-carrier Q10 rollout). The most telling detail is the carrier list — Sprint passed on the Z10 entirely in March, yet CNET reports a confirmed November commitment for the A10.
That flip suggests carriers see more traction in an all-touch flagship than in the keyboard device BlackBerry built its identity on. It fits CEO Thorsten Heins' stated focus on 'crazy multi-taskers' as the core audience, and comes alongside a broader services push: BBM arrived on iOS in May, with rumors of preloading deals on rival handsets.
First-order effects
- Sprint gains the BlackBerry touchscreen flagship it declined in March, giving it a holiday-season BlackBerry 10 device while the Z10 never reached its shelves.
- An all-touch A10 positions BlackBerry's holiday lineup directly against the touchscreen incumbents rather than differentiating on hardware keyboards, with the Q10 as the keyboard holdout.
Second-order effects
- Verizon and T-Mobile, which are carrying the Q10, face pressure to match Sprint's A10 commitment or cede the BlackBerry 10 touch-flagship slot to a rival carrier for the holidays.
- If the A10 becomes the volume device, carrier merchandising and marketing dollars shift toward it, squeezing the Q10 into a niche keyboard position within the same BlackBerry 10 family.
Third-order effects
- With a possible PlayBook follow-up shelved per April comments attributed to Heins, BlackBerry's platform case increasingly rests on an annual touch-flagship cadence plus cross-platform services like BBM on iOS — a software-and-services identity replacing the hardware-keyboard one.
- Carrier willingness to commit sight-unseen, as Sprint has here, signals that handset-lineup decisions are being made on platform momentum rather than proven sell-through, a dynamic that rewards whichever vendor can sustain a yearly flagship rhythm.
The trend: BlackBerry is repositioning from a keyboard-defined phone maker into a touchscreen-flagship-plus-services company, betting that cross-platform BBM can offset shrinking differentiation in handsets.