BlackBerry has officially announced that its BB10 smartphones will not be available in Japan, while a report from Nikkei adds that the company will stop selling phones in that country all together.
“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,” BlackBerry wrote on its official statement. “Japan is not a major market for BlackBerry and we have no plans to launch BlackBerry 10 there at this time.”
BlackBerry’s Japan snub is partly because the company cannot justify the cost of developing the necessary language modifications to its new operating system. Nikkei also notes that the company formerly known as Research in Motion has witnessed a steep drop in market share in Japan, currently standing at a mere 0.3 percent.
Meanwhile, the company has said that it will continue to support current BlackBerry customers in Japan.
