Reckons keyboard-loving customers will take the device to the promised land.
BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins recently spat in Apple's face by calling the iPhone stale. The German now makes another grand claim to Bloomberg by saying sales of the newly released Q10 handset will be in the "tens of millions."
"We have very, very good first signs already after the launch in the UK. This is going into the installed base of more than 70 million BlackBerry users so we have quite some expectations. We expect several tens of million of units," he said.
Presumably, Heins is referring to the exclusive launch of the Q10 in Selfridges stores on Friday, which resulted in the luxury retailer saying the device is already its best-selling smartphone it has ever sold.
The Q10 is the sequel to the company's flagship touchscreen handset, the Z10, which experienced one million shipments in Q1, though demand is said to have slowed. Meanwhile, the keyboard-wielding Q10 is expected to pick up the slack, with existing BlackBerry users preferring buttons to swipes and taps.