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Thorsten Heins: BlackBerry won't sell sub-$50 phones

Squint and you'll find a few neat parallels between BlackBerry and Nokia. Both are fallen giants which are staking their livelihoods on a nascent OS, while the former is a Canadian run by a European, and vice-versa. The one point where the pair's philosophies differ, however, is on the low-end market. While Nokia strove to embrace low-end phones like the Asha and the 105. Thorsten Heins has said he has no interest in producing budget phones for the developing world. At a question and answer session at the company's Waterloo HQ, the CEO was quoted as saying "You will not see us getting into the 50-, 60-buck phone segment. This is not BlackBerry." The move might alienate those who thought the Z10's elevated price in places like India was a bit excessive -- but at least Stephen Elop's got something for every wallet size.