BlackBerry will this week launch a new budget handset in Indonesia, one of its last bastions, a major step in the ailing smartphone maker’s fightback against mobile phone giants Samsung and Apple, its most powerful competitors.
The Z3, which is designed for Indonesia but will likely be introduced in other emerging markets later, is the first new BlackBerry phone since chief executive John Chen took the helm of the crisis-hit company in November.
The handset is also the first to be produced from the Canadian firm’s partnership with Taiwanese tech giant Foxconn, which makes gadgets for Apple, and is a key test of whether the new strategy will work.
