Outside of North American corporate users, BlackBerry will run into trouble, Dawson said.
"Outside there are still more consumers making their own decisions to use BlackBerry but many of them are in emerging markets where BlackBerry 10 won't be relevant for a long time because it'll be too expensive," Dawson said.
BlackBerry still looks like it will be strongest in the corporate market, rather than in the consumer arena, Dawson added.
"The only big differentiators are productivity-centric, so they'll help with business users, but not so much with pure consumer users," Dawson said.
Heins said that the company plans to ship the Z10 in mid-March in the U.S., which was a bad surprise, noted several analysts. Still, the Z10 will launch over the next few days in the U.K. and Canada, underscoring the company's ability to deliver on its promises, Gartner's Gartenberg said.
"Remember this is a new platform and U.S. carriers tend to have a lengthy testing time for new platforms, so the March launch in the U.S. is understandable," Gartenberg noted.
The big hurdle for BlackBerry is to get the word out to consumers, who have been walking into retail stores for several years to consider mainly Android and iPhone handsets, analysts agreed.
"BlackBerry has to get out there and evangelize the new platform," said IDC's Llamas. "They have a competitive product, but they need to get into the consumer conversation, so that when people walk into stores, they're talking about not just the iPhone and Android, but want to look at a BlackBerry too."
It will be an uphill battle, noted Forrester's Charles Golvin in a blog post.
"At best, RIM's new products will allow it to stop the bleeding and hold its market share. Our consumer data shows that, while more than half of U.S. BlackBerry owners plan to get a new phone in the next year, fewer than two in five of them say it will be another BlackBerry," Golvin writes.
