R

esearch in Motion (RIM), the maker of BlackBerry, said on Tuesday that the delay in the launch of the company’s BlackBerry 10 would not affect its market position, although the delay meant that it would miss its year-end sales momentum.

During a quarterly earnings call in June, RIM announced its decision to push back the launch of the new operating system from late this year to the first quarter of 2013 due to “not compromising” with the quality of the product.

After all, the new operating system was the cornerstone of the company’s strategy in regaining its past glories in the global market.

Yet, this postponement meant that RIM would miss the traditionally robust year-end holiday sales period, while competitors, including Apple and Microsoft, gear up for the launch of their new devices.

Hastings Singh, managing director for RIM South Asia, said that “in a perfect world it would be wonderful to have it [BlackBerry 10] out as early as possible”, including in the Indonesian market.

However, he said that the delay of the launch in the Indonesian market would not jeopardize BlackBerry’s position as the “number one smartphone brand” in Indonesia, although competitors were introducing new smartphones, including those running on Android.

“Android’s market share has grown. It now has a solid slice of the market,” he told The Jakarta Post during the BlackBerry 10 Jam World Tour in Jakarta.

“However, BlackBerry has maintained its number one position and we intend to keep it that way,” he continued. Various studies show that BlackBerry still holds around 50 percent of the market share, but the shipment of Android based devices has risen significantly.

Hastings added that RIM would focus instead on pushing the BlackBerry 7.1 into the Indonesian market for “the rest of the year”.

Meanwhile, he added that Indonesia “would be in the first group of countries to launch” the BlackBerry 10 given that the country was one of the company’s top markets.

“The last six product launches we’ve had have been within weeks of the global launch,” he said, adding the launch of one of the BlackBerry models had been in Indonesia.

He added that RIM was working on a “solid strategy” to market the BlackBerry 10 once it is available for the domestic market.

“The directions and goals are set. Obviously we have some time before the launch, so we have time to optimize those plans and work with our partners,” he said, declining to provide further details.

He said the company would be working with all its telecommunication operator partners, which was “a key part of their strategy”.

“Our conversations with all seven carriers are ongoing,” he said.

However, Darwin Lie, an analyst at IDC, noted that the delay would “automatically affect RIM a lot in terms of market share”, although the delay was RIM’s attempt to avoid launching a “half-baked product”.