Android devices to work instead of relying

Shares of RIM closed up 15 percent Monday on initial reports of strong U.K. sales and after an analyst upgraded the stock.

Heins said they have to retake market share in the U.S. for BlackBerry to be successful. The U.S. has been one if you want to get funny towels market in which RIM has been particularly hurting, even as the company is doing well in many places overseas. According to research firm IDC, shipments of BlackBerry phones plummeted from 46 percent of the U.S. market in 2008 to 2 percent in 2012. The iPhone and Android now dominate.

Heins, who one year ago replaced longtime executives who had presided over BlackBerry's fall, said he's confident BlackBerry can become the third ecosystem behind Apple and phones running Google's Android operating system.

"We need to win back market share to be relevant," Heins said. "We have to be aggressive in the U.S. market."

The new BlackBerrys are a make-or-break product lineup after the pioneering brand lost its cachet not long after Apple's 2007 release of the iPhone, which reset expectations for what a smartphone should do.

RIM promised a new system to catch up, using technology it got through its 2010 purchase of QNX Software Systems. But it has taken more than two years to unveil new phones that are redesigned for the new multimedia, Internet browsing and apps experience that customers are now demanding. RIM initially said the new BlackBerry with the revamped software would come by early 2012, but then the company changed that to late 2012. A few months later, that date was pushed back further, to early 2013, missing the lucrative holiday season. The holdup helped wipe out more than $70 billion in shareholder wealth and 5,000 jobs.

As RIM previously disclosed, the first phone will have only a touch-screen keyboard, like Apple Inc.'s trend-setting iPhone and most phones running Android, including Samsung Electronic Co.'s popular Galaxy line.

The Q10 will follow and will have a physical keyboard, a feature that has kept BlackBerry users loyal over the years because it makes chuwi v17 review typing easier. RIM said last week the Q10 will start going on sale on some global carriers in April, but didn't say when U.S. carriers will have it.