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Will make or break BlackBerry miss the mark?
Tue, 26th Mar 2013
FYI, this story is more than a year old

After suffering an "underwhelming" response to its newly released Z10 smartphone, can BlackBerry prove the doubters wrong ahead of its financial results this week?

In what will be the company's first quarterly earnings report since releasing its new line of smartphones, the industry will be eagerly anticipating whether the rebranded firm has hit the jackpot with the Z10 and Q10 models.

After a week of falling shares, limited consumer interested and frankly poor sales, BlackBerry will be hoping to prove its strength in the market, despite frequent industry putdowns.

Research team UBS reported a disappointing opening of the Z10, and ahead of further launches next week - that is bad news for BlackBerry.

“Several stores had received up to 15 devices and had sold ‘low-mid single digit’ units/day in the first 2 days,” UBS said.

Analysts are predicting revenues of between US$2.68 billion and $2.77 billion for the company, including an expected share loss of between 22 and 35 cents.

In other words, UBS are stumped when it comes to predicting BlackBerry's fortunes over the coming months and even years.

"We continue to struggle with the strategic positioning of the company longer-term," UBS said.

"Unlike the competition, BBRY, in our opinion, lacks a compelling multi-screen device strategy as well as a content ecosystem and cloud strategy.

"It remains practically a single product company, as increasingly the outlook of the Playbook remains questionable as well.

"With limited scale and resources to invest relative to its competition including Samsung, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and Huawei, amongst others, the longer term outlook remains challenging for BBRY, in our opinion."

Currently fighting with Apple for a mega contract with the U.S. Department of Defence, the company claimed to have received a million unit order from an established partner last week, while also launching the Z10 in Australia.

Will the order

What do you expect from BlackBerry's financial report this week? Tell us your thoughts below