Blackberry and Microsoft cut Z10 and Surface prices

Blackberry and Microsoft have both cut prices on their Newest products in with the motive of boost sales.

 

In US, Blackberry has cut the price of the Z10 phone to as low as $49 with a contract - down from $199 four months ago.

And in the UK, Microsoft dropped the price of the 32GB Surface RT to £279 from £400, with the 64GB model's price down by the same amount to £359.

Both firms have developed the devices to launch their latest software.

They have both have tried to compete with Apple, Google and Samsung on smartphones and tablets with limited success.

Blackberry in particular is struggling to revive its share of the smartphone market with the touchscreen-only Z10, which shows off its new BB10 operating system.

The company reported an $84m loss for its last quarter and refused to disclose how many devices running BB10 it sold. But statistics show it sold fewer phones in those three months than in the same period the year before

Microsoft's Surface tablet is intended to challenge the iPad and Android-based tablets and runs Windows RT, a slimmed-down version of its latest Windows 8 operating system.

Recent figures from analysts show that 49.2 million tablets were shipped between January and March and only about 900,000 of those were Surfaces.

Other Windows-powered tablets totalled 1.8 million units sold across all vendors. Apple's iPad and iPad Mini accounted for 19.5 million of tablets sold.