Even though many of us aren’t interested in buying a Blackberry Z10 phone, we are cheering Blackberry on and hoping this is the lifeline they need to rebuild their business. As soon as we heard promising sales figures (in Canada and the UK), the naysayers jumped in and started trumpeting the lack of supply as the justification for sellouts and not excess demand.

Now we learn that half of the buyers of the Z10 in Canada are migrating from competing products (1/3 of UK buyers). The info comes from Blackberry so we’ll have to take it with a grain of salt but it is promising. If it turns out to be true, this may be the kind of momentum they need to grow once again.

I have had a chance to play with the Z10 and am extremely pleased with the security model and controls they have built-in (primarily for enterprise customers). The ability to separate the phone’s personal and business sides is an excellent addition.  But looking at it as a standard consumer, I didn’t see a killer feature that would push me to migrate from Android or IOS to the Z10.

I really want to see Blackberry rise from the ashes and become a compelling competitor in a smartphone market that has become a duopoly (sorry Microsoft but Apple and Google are eating your lunch in the smartphone market).