BlackBerry India MD Sunil Dutt resigns

BlackBerry, which was earlier called Research In Motion, announced that its India managing director Sunil Dutt has resigned. He leaves the company with immediate effect. 

Varghese Thomas, corporate communications director at BlackBerry India, told TOI, "In the interim, Rick Costanzo, executive vice president for global sales, will take over the leadership of the team in India as (the company) starts the search for a new sales lead as soon as possible." Dutt's resignation comes at a time when the company is going through a critical phase following the launch of BlackBerry Z10, a new smartphone with which it hopes to win back market share from Apple's iPhone and Androiddevices. 
"Sunil Dutt has left his position as managing director, BlackBerry India, with immediate effect. We wish Sunil well for the future. India is an extremely important market for BlackBerry and our aim is to continue to build on our recent momentum with the launch of BlackBerry 10," said Thomas. 
BlackBerry 10 is the new operating system for the BlackBerry phones. The company has developed it with an aim to take on Google's Android and Apple's iOS that powers iPhone. In the last few years, BlackBerry's market share has declined sharply as consumers opt for full-touchscreen phones running on operating system developed by Apple and Google. 
The number of units shipped by BlackBerry was so low in India in Q4, 2012 that the company did not even feature in the top five smartphone vendors in a report published by IDC. 
BlackBerry launched Z10 in India on February 25. In January, Dutt told TOI that BlackBerry 10, which powers Z10, was akin to the new beginning for the company.
The device has received praise from technology reviewers and bloggers for its new user interface but the availability of apps remained a concern. In India, it has also been criticized for having a very high price of over Rs 43,000 while smartphones like Samsung Galaxy S III and HTC One Xare available for around Rs 30,000. 
On Friday BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins told Bloomberg that he was surprised by how well the Z10 sold in India after its debut. He claimed that five days' worth of inventory sold out in just two days. "I got an emergency call from my manager from India saying, 'I'm sold out after two days,'" said Heins. "So now we're scrambling to reload those channels."