Sunil Dutt (left) and Vivek Bharadwaj, head of BlackBerry software portfolio, in Mumbai on Monday. A Telegraph picture

Mumbai, Feb. 25: The much-awaited BlackBerry Z10 smartphone was launched in the country today at a price of Rs 43,490.

Powered by the new operating system BlackBerry10, the smartphone will hit the shelves in four days.

Analysts, however, did not give it a perfect 10 rating because of the price tag. “We had expected it to be priced at around Rs 39,000. The device is expensive at Rs 43,490 and it could deter buyers,” an analyst said. The BlackBerry Z10 will compete against Samsung Galaxy SIII, priced at around Rs 29,000, and Nokia Lumia 920, at Rs 38,000.

Sunil Dutt, the company’s managing director for India, said Waterloo, Ontario-based BlackBerry’s plan was to launch devices at different price points using the new operating system.

Dutt said: “When you start to bring in a new platform, you always start at the top end of the segment, be it anybody. When you look at some of the competitors they have also done that and that’s what we have done.

“We have announced the Z10 and the Q10 (yet to be launched in India) and over a period of time, we will get more and more devices at different price points. Moreover, at this point of time, both the BlackBerry 10 and the BlackBerry 7 will continue to co-exist,” he said.

The Z10 features a 1.5GHz dual core processor with 2GB of RAM, 16GB of internal storage and an expandable memory card slot that supports up to 64GB of additional storage. It will be available in over 2,000 retail outlets and come in white and black colours.

The new OS contains the BlackBerry Hub, a single place to manage all conversations, the BlackBerry Flow, where apps flow seamlessly together, apart from the Balance technology, which separates and secures work applications and data from personal content on BlackBerry devices.