Confirmed: BlackBerry to Stop Selling Smartphones in Japan

Looks like the global rollout of BlackBerry’s new flagship smartphones will not extend to the entire globe. Certainly it won’t include Japan.

Confirming news first reported by the Nikkei, a BlackBerry spokeswoman told AllThingsD Thursday that the company is indeed pulling out of the Japanese market — at least for the time being.

“We are in the process of launching BlackBerry 10 globally in key markets, and we are seeing positive demand for the BlackBerry Z10 in countries where it has already launched. Japan is not a major market for BlackBerry, and we have no plans to launch BlackBerry 10 devices there at this time,” spokeswoman Amy McDowell said. “However, we will continue to support BlackBerry customers in Japan.”

The company declined to comment on its plans for other non-critical markets.

A surprising move for BlackBerry, though perhaps it shouldn’t be. Over the past few years, BlackBerry’s market share in Japan has suffered a decline so precipitous that it no longer even ranks by name on comScore’s survey of the top smartphone platforms in country. As of June 2012, BlackBerry was lumped into the research firm’s “Other” category which itself claims only a 0.4 percent share. At the time the survey was conducted, 24 million people in Japan owned smartphones. So, while the country may not be a major market for BlackBerry, it is very much a major smartphone market.

Developing …

BlackBerry Bounceback Beat Back

Research In Motion has a new name, a new operating system and a pair of new handsets, but it’s still got the same old sinking stock price.

On Thursday, shares of the smartphone pioneer continued the downward slide they began the day before, during the unveiling of its long-awaited BlackBerry 10 OS and handsets. BlackBerry shares opened down 10 percent and, at $13.21, they’re down nearly 4 percent as I write this.

Why the pessimism after what seemed to be a fairly successful launch event? The estimated arrival dates of the first of BlackBerry’s BB10 phones. Though the touchscreen Z10 debuted in the U.K. and will ship in Canada and the United Arab Emirates next week, it won’t hit the U.S. market until March. And the Q10, a BB10 handset with a physical keyboard, won’t be available anywhere until April. Later-than-expected ship dates imply smaller-than-hoped-for unit shipments, and the Street clearly finds that disappointing.

Beyond that, there are concerns about the BlackBerry ecosystem and addressable market that I mentioned earlier this morning. That said, BB10 is a vast improvement over its predecessor, and has certainly closed the gap with Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android. It’s not hard to imagine it appealing to BlackBerry diehards looking for a next-generation device. But the legacy user base is an easy mark. Those BlackBerry users who have defected to iOS and Android over the last few years will be a far harder sell.