The first BlackBerry phone produced by China’s Foxconn will debut in April in Indonesia, the CEO of the phone maker said Tuesday.
The handset, which has the code name “Jakarta,” is the result of a BlackBerry deal with Foxconn that seeks to shift design and production of low-end phones outside of the company.
“It’s going to be a very, very attractive phone for the market,” said John Chen, during a news conference at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. “Somewhere in April, it will come out in Indonesia. It will be under $200 in retail price.”
“When I first got into the phone business, they told me it takes nine to 12 months to get a phone up and going. In less than three months the phone is up and qualified and we are now working on distribution,” he said.
Chen said the phone will also be released in other countries.
The same model will go on sale in other Southeast Asian countries and BlackBerry plans an LTE version that will be released in the rest of the world.
Chen didn’t specify a release date for the LTE version, except to deadpan, “sometime in the future, before I die.”
The CEO also said a new version of the Q10, called the Q20, will be available later this year. It features the trackpad that was a signature part of older BlackBerry models and is being brought back after customer requests.
BlackBerry had a 1.9 percent market share in 2013 on shipments of 18.6 million phones, according to figures from Gartner. That’s down from the 5 percent global share it enjoyed in 2012 and made it the number four platform in the market.