BlackBerry, the company soon to be formerly known as RIM, will take a big step towards its new (and frankly more logical) name and brand on February 4, after the Canadian company confirmed its new stock market ticker will go live next Monday.
BlackBerry will trade as ‘BB’ on the Toronto Stock Exchange and ‘BBRY’ on the NASDAQ, although its legal name will not change until shareholders vote on the matter at its Annual General Meeting which takes place later this year. Last year’s meeting took place in July.
News of the renaming was the first nugget that CEO Thorsten Heins shared at Wednesday’s BlackBerry 10 launch event. Heins went on to unveil the touch screen Z10 and keyboard-sporting Q10 and, while the media response indicated that the Z10 is solid if unspectacular, the market was not impressed and the company’s share price dropped nearly 7 percent following the announcement.
Perhaps the most disappointing aspect was that US-based shoppers must wait until March to get their hands on the Z10, despite the phone going on pre-order with the country’s top four operators on Wednesday. Verizon, T-Mobile USA, Sprint and ATT will all undergo testing before making the phone available to their customers.
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The Z10 went on sale in the UK on Thursday, and is set to hit Canada and the Middle East on February 15.
Pricing is varied across the world but the Z10 is confirmed as costing $199 on contract with Verizon, while the same device will be $149 on a 3-year deal in Canada. The suggested retail price of an off-contract Z10 phones is $599 in Canada, the WSJ reports.
Little is known of the Q10 and Heins admits that the priority is getting the touch screen device in the hands of customers. The QWERTY Q10 could debut in April; RIM is certainly testing the patience of keyboard-loving BlackBerry fans by making them wait that long.
Image via Justin Sullivan / Getty Images
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