Jennifer Lawrence, Anne Hathaway & More Share Oscar Dress Hints

By Alex Apatoff

02/05/2013 at 04:30 PM EST

Clockwise from top left: Jennifer Lawrence, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain and Amy Adams

Splash News Online; PR Photos; Getty; WireImage

The countdown to the Academy Awards has officially begun, and so has the buzz around what the nominees will be wearing.

Nominated actresses shared their gown plans with reporters at a Beverly Hills luncheon in their honor Monday.

Though Jennifer Lawrence joked, "I'm going to wear sweatpants," it turns out just the opposite is true. "Last time was comfort. This year, I'm like, 'Suck it up, wear a corset,'" she said. "I am going to go for fashion this time."

Last year, before donning her skintight red Calvin Klein Collection number, "I ate a Philly cheesesteak and fries, and I was like 'This is definitely going to help,'" she said. "It didn't, 'cause I had to double-Spanx it."

Another star eyeing extra Spanx? Anne Hathaway, who said she couldn't start preparing for a very important reason: "It was the Super Bowl! I couldn't think about dresses with all that delicious fried food around!"

Though she did say she's looking at some "cool options," let's hope they're all more drama-free than her Giambattista Valli SAG dress, which she revealed had a broken zipper – but her "magician" stylist made it work anyway.

The Master's Amy Adams was tight-lipped about her pick for the Oscars, allowing only that it will be "a dress! No girl ever tells you. Has any girl ever gotten up here and said, 'I'm wearing this designer and it will be this color?' " she teased.

But Jessica Chastain was a bit more forthcoming about her plans, saying, "I'm going to go for something that's perhaps colorful."

Her reasoning: "Most little girls dream about their wedding dresses, but I always dreamed about my Oscar dress – maybe because I like color!" Also on her wish list for the gown: "I love fashion that celebrates a woman's body [and] maybe is a throwback to the glamour of Old Hollywood, that silhouette, but somehow making it modern."

• Reporting by MELODY CHIU

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Critics seek to delay NYC sugary drinks size limit

NEW YORK (AP) — Opponents are pressing to delay enforcement of the city's novel plan to crack down on supersized, sugary drinks, saying businesses shouldn't have to spend millions of dollars to comply until a court rules on whether the measure is legal.

With the rule set to take effect March 12, beverage industry, restaurant and other business groups have asked a judge to put it on hold at least until there's a ruling on their lawsuit seeking to block it altogether. The measure would bar many eateries from selling high-sugar drinks in cups or containers bigger than 16 ounces.

"It would be a tremendous waste of expense, time, and effort for our members to incur all of the harm and costs associated with the ban if this court decides that the ban is illegal," Chong Sik Le, president of the New York Korean-American Grocers Association, said in court papers filed Friday.

City lawyers are fighting the lawsuit and oppose postponing the restriction, which the city Board of Health approved in September. They said Tuesday they expect to prevail.

"The obesity epidemic kills nearly 6,000 New Yorkers each year. We see no reason to delay the Board of Health's reasonable and legal actions to combat this major, growing problem," Mark Muschenheim, a city attorney, said in a statement.

Another city lawyer, Thomas Merrill, has said officials believe businesses have had enough time to get ready for the new rule. He has noted that the city doesn't plan to seek fines until June.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg and other city officials see the first-of-its-kind limit as a coup for public health. The city's obesity rate is rising, and studies have linked sugary drinks to weight gain, they note.

"This is the biggest step a city has taken to curb obesity," Bloomberg said when the measure passed.

Soda makers and other critics view the rule as an unwarranted intrusion into people's dietary choices and an unfair, uneven burden on business. The restriction won't apply at supermarkets and many convenience stores because the city doesn't regulate them.

While the dispute plays out in court, "the impacted businesses would like some more certainty on when and how they might need to adjust operations," American Beverage Industry spokesman Christopher Gindlesperger said Tuesday.

Those adjustments are expected to cost the association's members about $600,000 in labeling and other expenses for bottles, Vice President Mike Redman said in court papers. Reconfiguring "16-ounce" cups that are actually made slightly bigger, to leave room at the top, is expected to take cup manufacturers three months to a year and cost them anywhere from more than $100,000 to several millions of dollars, Foodservice Packaging Institute President Lynn Dyer said in court documents.

Movie theaters, meanwhile, are concerned because beverages account for more than 20 percent of their overall profits and about 98 percent of soda sales are in containers greater than 16 ounces, according to Robert Sunshine, executive director of the National Association of Theatre Owners of New York State.

___

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Wall Street bounces back after sell-off; results a boost

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks climbed on Tuesday, recovering a day after the market's biggest sell-off since November, as stronger-than-expected earnings brightened the profit picture.

Dell Inc's stock rose after the world's No. 3 computer maker agreed to be taken private in a $24.4 billion deal, the largest leveraged buyout since the 2008-2009 financial crisis. The stock gained 1.1 percent to $13.42.

All 10 S&P sectors were higher, and the S&P 500 and Nasdaq gained more than 1 percent.

The market's bounce follows a sell-off on Monday that gave the S&P 500 its biggest percentage decline since mid-November. The benchmark remains up 6 percent since the start of the year and is less than 4 percent away from its all-time closing high of 1,565.15 from October 2007.

Analysts said fourth-quarter results have been among factors helping to boost stocks. On Tuesday, Archer Daniels Midland reported revenue and adjusted fourth-quarter earnings that beat expectations, boosted by strong global demand for oilseeds. Shares rose 3.3 percent to $29.38.

"There's not a huge upside surprise by any means, but we're definitely seeing slightly better-than-expected earnings overall," said Bryant Evans, portfolio manager at Cozad Asset Management, in Champaign, Illinois.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was up 99.22 points, or 0.71 percent, at 13,979.30. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was up 15.58 points, or 1.04 percent, at 1,511.29. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was up 40.41 points, or 1.29 percent, at 3,171.58.

The market shot higher at the start of the year after U.S. lawmakers were able to come to a last-minute agreement to avoid a national "fiscal cliff," but questions on spending cuts remain.

President Barack Obama on Tuesday urged Congress to pass a small package of spending cuts and tax reforms. Though the plan was quickly rebuffed by Republican leaders, investors are looking for an agreement.

"I think there's some hopefulness out there that a reasonable compromise will be made," Evans said.

Also in earnings, Estée Lauder Cos Inc reported a higher quarterly profit and raised its full-year profit forecast. The stock rose 6 percent to $64.71.

With results in from more than half of the S&P 500 companies, 69 percent have beaten profit expectations, compared with the 62 percent average since 1994 and the 65 percent average over the past four quarters. Sixty-six percent of companies have beaten on revenue.

Fourth-quarter earnings for S&P 500 companies are expected to rise 4.5 percent, according to the data, above the 1.9 percent forecast at the start of earnings season.

On the down side, McGraw-Hill shares slumped 10.7 percent to $44.92 after the U.S. Justice Department filed a civil lawsuit seeking $5 billion over mortgage bond ratings. Standard & Poor's, a McGraw Hill unit, was accused of inflating ratings and understating risk out of a desire to gain more business from investment banks.

On Monday, McGraw-Hill stock suffered its worst one-day decline since the 1987 market crash.

Volume was roughly 6.7 billion shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and the NYSE MKT, compared with the 2012 average daily closing volume of about 6.45 billion.

Advancers outpaced decliners on the NYSE by nearly 11 to 4 and on the Nasdaq by about 3 to 1.

(Editing by Kenneth Barry and Nick Zieminski)

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Georgia’s Ivanishvili Sees Warming With Russia

TBILISI, Georgia — As Russia took steps to resume imports of Georgian-produced wine and mineral water, Georgia’s new prime minister, the billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, said Tuesday he was making progress on one of his campaign promises — to repair the country’s badly frayed relationship with its huge neighbor.

Mr. Ivanishvili has struggled to meet the expectations that swept him to power in October, ending the nine-year political dominance of President Mikheil Saakashvili and his party. Many voters expected his election to be followed by immediate financial relief and a turnaround in relations with Russia, perhaps even re-engagement with the breakaway Georgian territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

On Monday came the news that Russia would dispatch teams of sanitary inspectors to Georgia in anticipation of resuming imports. Georgian wine and mineral water — Russian consumer staples since the Soviet era — were banned from Russian shelves in 2006, as Mr. Saakashvili openly challenged Russia’s supremacy in the region. At a news conference marking his first 100 days in office on Tuesday, Mr. Ivanishvili said he was making headway repairing the rift.

“It will not happen as fast as I used to say, and I can confirm this today,” he said. But he said that he felt a friendly tone was returning to the relationship, and that Russian officials had given him “a surprisingly warm reception” at the recent World Economic Forum in Davos.

“I got the feeling that there is great nostalgia and great desire not only from the people of Georgia but also from Russia for the restoration of relations between the two states,” he said.

Mr. Saakashvili and his allies have warned that Mr. Ivanishvili’s overtures may mark a departure from Georgia’s longstanding efforts to join NATO and the European Union, which still has strong public support. Late last month, legislators from Mr. Saakashvili’s United National Movement proposed amending the country’s constitution to make Georgia’s “pro-Western orientation” legally binding.

Mr. Ivanishvili said Tuesday that he would not amend the constitution, but that altering the country’s pro-Western foreign policy was “unimaginable.”

“This is not the choice of either Saakashvili or the previous government,” he said. “This is the will of the Georgian people.”

A Russian analyst, Fyodor Lukyanov, commenting on the “thaw” between the two countries in Rossiyskaya Gazeta, a government newspaper, warned that the early stage of re-engagement — like the lifting of economic blockades — would be followed by a more difficult one, especially if Russia applied “excess pressure” to bring Tbilisi back into its orbit.

He noted that Russian chatter about Georgia re-joining the Commonwealth of Independent States, a Russian-dominated organization it left after its brief 2008 war with Russia, had provoked a storm of controversy in Georgia, for which integration is a fundamental goal.

“Without the dreams of institutional integration into the Western society, Georgia hangs in the air-- there is no other aim for its development,” he wrote. “The idea of Russia, if it existed, could not be considered now. But quite frankly Moscow cannot offer anything anywhere near as attractive as the European idea — maybe more a matter of image than substance, but that doesn’t matter.”

Olesya Vartanyan reported from Tbilisi and Ellen Barry from Moscow.

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Second-generation iPad mini could pack a display with 324 pixels per inch

Apple (AAPL) may be about to make up for delivering a disappointingly low resolution for its first-generation iPad mini display. BrightWire reports that supply chain sources have told Chinese website My Drivers that the next-generation iPad mini will indeed feature a 7.9-inch Retina display with a resolution of 2048 x 1536 pixels, or 324 pixels per inch. For comparison, consider that the original iPad mini delivered a resolution of just 163 pixels per inch, less than both the Amazon (AMZN) Kindle Fire HD and the Google (GOOG) Nexus 7, which both featured displays with resolutions of 216 pixels per inch. BrightWire’s report also backs up earlier rumors we’ve heard about Apple choosing AU Optronics to make an HD Retina display for its next-generation iPad mini.

[More from BGR: iOS 6.1 untethered jailbreak now available for download, compatible with iPhone 5 and iPad mini]

This article was originally published on BGR.com

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Spice Girl Emma Bunton Searches for Dog Lost on Daily Walk

People Pets

By Amy Jamieson

02/04/2013 at 04:30 PM EST

Emma Bunton's dog is missing – and she needs more than just Girl Power to get her back.

"My gorgeous brown Labrador went missing on daily walk," the Spice Girl Tweeted on Monday. "She will be so scared please look out around East Barnet, Hadley Wood, Trent Park [areas of London]."

The pooch, named Phoebe, is micro-chipped and described by Bunton as "gentle."

The dog's disappearance has left the singer "in bits," she Tweeted later. "Thank you for all your reassuring messages! Please keep looking."

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Bullying study: It does get better for gay teens

CHICAGO (AP) — It really does get better for gay and bisexual teens when it comes to being bullied, although young gay men have it worse than their lesbian peers, according to the first long-term scientific evidence on how the problem changes over time.

The seven-year study involved more than 4,000 teens in England who were questioned yearly through 2010, until they were 19 and 20 years old. At the start, just over half of the 187 gay, lesbian and bisexual teens said they had been bullied; by 2010 that dropped to 9 percent of gay and bisexual boys and 6 percent of lesbian and bisexual girls.

The researchers said the same results likely would be found in the United States.

In both countries, a "sea change" in cultural acceptance of gays and growing intolerance for bullying occurred during the study years, which partly explains the results, said study co-author Ian Rivers, a psychologist and professor of human development at Brunel University in London.

That includes a government mandate in England that schools work to prevent bullying, and changes in the United States permitting same-sex marriage in several states.

In 2010, syndicated columnist Dan Savage launched the "It Gets Better" video project to encourage bullied gay teens. It was prompted by widely publicized suicides of young gays, and includes videos from politicians and celebrities.

"Bullying tends to decline with age regardless of sexual orientation and gender," and the study confirms that, said co-author Joseph Robinson, a researcher and assistant professor of educational psychology at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. "In absolute terms, this would suggest that yes, it gets better."

The study appears online Monday in the journal Pediatrics.

Eliza Byard, executive director of the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network, said the results mirror surveys by her anti-bullying advocacy group that show bullying is more common in U.S. middle schools than in high schools.

But the researchers said their results show the situation is more nuanced for young gay men.

In the first years of the study, gay boys and girls were almost twice as likely to be bullied as their straight peers. By the last year, bullying dropped overall and was at about the same level for lesbians and straight girls. But the difference between men got worse by ages 19 and 20, with gay young men almost four times more likely than their straight peers to be bullied.

The mixed results for young gay men may reflect the fact that masculine tendencies in girls and women are more culturally acceptable than femininity in boys and men, Robinson said.

Savage, who was not involved in the study, agreed.

"A lot of the disgust that people feel when you bring up homosexuality ... centers around gay male sexuality," Savage said. "There's more of a comfort level" around gay women, he said.

Kendall Johnson, 21, a junior theater major at the University of Illinois, said he was bullied for being gay in high school, mostly when he brought boyfriends to school dances or football games.

"One year at prom, I had a guy tell us that we were disgusting and he didn't want to see us dancing anymore," Johnson said. A football player and the president of the drama club intervened on his behalf, he recalled.

Johnson hasn't been bullied in college, but he said that's partly because he hangs out with the theater crowd and avoids the fraternity scene. Still, he agreed, that it generally gets better for gays as they mature.

"As you grow older, you become more accepting of yourself," Johnson said.

___

Online:

Pediatrics: http://www.pediatrics.org

It Gets Better: http://www.itgetsbetter.org

___

AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/LindseyTanner

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S&P 500 posts worst day since November; McGraw-Hill shares sink

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks slid on Monday, giving the S&P 500 its worst day since November, as renewed worries about the euro zone crisis caused the market to pull back from recent gains.

Shares of McGraw-Hill shed 13.8 percent to $50.30, their worst daily percentage decline since the October 1987 market crash, after news the U.S. Justice Department plans to sue Standard & Poor's, a unit of McGraw-Hill, over its mortgage bond ratings. It would be the first such federal action against a credit rating agency related to the recent financial crisis.

Chevron and Wal-Mart were among the biggest drags on the Dow after analyst downgrades, and all 10 S&P 500 sectors were lower. The losses follow Friday's market climb that left the S&P 500 at a five-year high and the Dow above 14,000.

"The market is extended and due for a pullback. I think people are looking for an excuse to make sales, and there (is) the concern coming from Europe," said Michael James, senior trader at Wedbush Morgan in Los Angeles.

Spanish and Italian bond yields rose, renewing worries about the euro zone's sovereign debt crisis. Spain's prime minister faced calls to resign over a corruption scandal, while a probe of alleged misconduct involving an Italian bank was expected to widen three weeks before a national election.

Adding to market pressure, data from the U.S. Commerce Department showed overall factory orders for December were below economists' expectations.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was down 129.71 points, or 0.93 percent, at 13,880.08. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was down 17.46 points, or 1.15 percent, at 1,495.71. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was down 47.93 points, or 1.51 percent, at 3,131.17.

With 18.7 billion shares traded, it was the busiest day on record for McGraw-Hill shares. Shares of ratings agency Moody's Corp fell 10.7 percent at $49.45, their worst one-day drop since August 2011.

The benchmark S&P 500 rose on Friday, leaving it roughly 60 points away from its all-time intraday high of 1,576.09, while the Dow's march above 14,000 was the highest for the index since October 2007.

The S&P index remains up about 5 percent for the year, with nearly half of the gains coming after U.S. legislators temporarily sidestepped the "fiscal cliff" of automatic tax increases and spending cuts.

The CBOE Volatility index VIX <.vix>, Wall Street's so-called fear gauge, jumped 13.7 percent.

Chevron dipped 1.1 percent to $115.20 after UBS cut its rating to neutral, while Wal-Mart Stores Inc shed 1.2 percent to $69.63 after JP Morgan lowered its rating on the world's largest retailer and reduced its price target.

Shares of household products company Clorox rose 0.7 percent to $79.72 after quarterly profit beat analysts' estimates as a severe flu season boosted sales of disinfecting wipes.

According to Thomson Reuters data, of the 256 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported earnings through Monday morning, 68.4 percent have reported earnings above analyst expectations, compared with the 62 percent average since 1994 and the 65 percent average over the past four quarters.

S&P 500 fourth-quarter earnings are expected to rise 4.4 percent, according to the data. That estimate is above the 1.9 percent forecast at the start of earnings season, but well below the 9.9 percent forecast on October 1.

In deal news, software maker Oracle Corp agreed to buy network equipment company Acme Packet Inc for $1.7 billion net of cash. Shares of Oracle were down 3 percent at $35.13 while Acme Packet shot up 23.7 percent to $29.59.

Shares of Herbalife Ltd ended up 1.3 percent at $35.54, recovering its losses ahead of the close. The New York Post reported the seller of weight loss products is facing a probe by the Federal Trade Commission.

Volume was roughly 6.3 billion shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and the NYSE MKT, compared with the 2012 average daily closing volume of about 6.45 billion.

Decliners outpaced advancers on the NYSE by nearly 4 to 1 and on the Nasdaq also by about 4 to 1.

(Editing by Kenneth Barry and Nick Zieminski)

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The Lede Blog: Malala Yousafzai, Pakistani Girl Shot by Taliban Militants, Speaks in New Videos

Last Updated, 4:54 p.m. Speaking on camera for the first time since she survived an assassination attempt by the Pakistani Taliban last year, the young activist Malala Yousafzai began with the words, “Today you can see that I’m alive.” The 15-year-old, who was shot in the head as she left school in Pakistan’s Swat Valley four months ago, promised that she would continue to be an outspoken advocate of the right for “every girl, every child, to be educated.”

In the brief statement, the young advocate attributed her survival to the prayers of her supporters and urged them to contribute to a fund established in her name to further the cause of education for girls. “Because of these prayers, God has given me this new life,” Ms. Yousafzai said. “And this is a second life; this is a new life. And I want to serve, I want to serve the people.”

A video statement from Malala Yousafzai, a young Pakistani activist who was shot in the head by Taliban militants.

The English-language statement was recorded just before Ms. Yousafzai underwent surgery at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, England, over the weekend to repair damage to her skull caused by the bullet fired into her head at point-blank range in October.

On Monday, the hospital released more video of the young patient, speaking to one of her doctors after the five-hour operation to reconstruct her skull and implant a device to restore hearing to her left ear.

Video of Malala Yousafzai speaking to a doctor in Birmingham, England after an operation on Saturday.

“I’m feeling alright and I’m happy that the operations, both the operations, were successful,” she told Dr. Mav Manji, a critical care specialist at Queen Elizabeth Hospital. Asked about the future, she said, “My mission is the same, to help people, and I will do that.” She also expressed her gratitude to the doctors in Pakistan and Britain who cared for her. “God gave me a new life,” she said, “because of the prayers of people and because of the talent of doctors.”

At a news conference on Monday, Dr. Anwen White, the neurosurgeon who led the reconstructive surgery, and Dr. Dave Rosser, the hospital’s medical director, explained that the titanium cranioplasty, which involved repairing the missing area of her skull with a specially molded titanium plate, “went very well.” (Video of the news conference was posted online by Britain’s Channel 4 News and the hospital uploaded images of the surgery in progress to YouTube.)

An update posted on the hospital’s Web site explained that, after the skull surgery, “Malala then had a cochlear implant fitted – a small, complex electronic device that provides a sense of sound to someone who is profoundly deaf or severely hard of hearing. The cochlear implant is to restore hearing to her left ear after she was left deaf in that ear by the bullet.”

As Fatima Manji of Britain’s Channel 4 News reports, the activist also recorded statements in Urdu and Pashto, languages spoken in Pakistan and Afghanistan. In the Urdu version, Ms. Manji notes, the girl said, “I would be willing to sacrifice myself again.”

#Malala has released her first public statement on camera #c4news http://t.co/2ZJKCwCO

— Fatima Manji (@fatimamanji) 4 Feb 13

In her Urdu statement #Malala says she is willing to “sacrifice herself again” so that all children can get an education. #c4news

— Fatima Manji (@fatimamanji) 4 Feb 13

The video statement was produced for the Vital Voices Global Partnership, a nongovernmental organization based in Washington “that identifies, trains and empowers emerging women leaders,” which will administer the new “Malala Fund,” in cooperation with the young activist and her family.

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BlackBerry searching high and low in India, Indonesia

NEW DELHI/JAKARTA (Reuters) – Research in Motion Ltd must chart a tough course in its two key emerging markets of India and Indonesia: quickly launch cheaper handsets to woo lower-end subscribers while restoring its tattered brand among the countries’ status-conscious.

The company, which is rebranding itself BlackBerry after its best-known smartphone, has won millions of followers in these two Asian countries, mostly by selling cheaper handsets and offering service packages as low as $ 2 a month. So it’s unlikely that the Z10 model introduced last week, which operators in India expect to sell for around $ 750, will appeal to the users it must reach if it is to build market share.

“It’s clear that not only are India and Indonesia among the largest markets but in terms of future smartphone growth, they’re amongst the ones with the most potential,” said Melissa Chau, senior research manager at technology research group IDC in Singapore. “But the two devices that have been launched are not well aligned to the needs of these two markets.”

While the company does not break down its sales by country, data from IDC shows that Indonesia was BlackBerry’s biggest market outside the United States and Britain last year, while India was ninth.

ABI Research said that BlackBerry accounted for nearly half of Indonesia’s smartphone shipments in 2012. Compare this with a global share of just 5.3 percent. In India, the world’s second-largest mobile phone market, BlackBerry ranks third after Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and Nokia.

In both countries, young people are drawn by low-cost handsets allowing them to communicate for free on the BlackBerry Messaging Service (BBM). Almost all carriers offer services for the device. Indonesia’s XL Axiata Tbk PT, for example, saw a 45 percent jump in BlackBerry subscribers last financial year after offering packages for as little as 20 cents per day.

But this picture is changing rapidly.

The rise of messaging services such as WhatsApp that are not confined to any single operating system and the proliferation of cheap Android devices have diluted the BlackBerry’s appeal.

Mickey Nayoan, a 32-year old product designer in Jakarta, swapped his BlackBerry for a Samsung phone six months ago and isn’t missing it.

“I survived without BlackBerry because there’s WhatsApp,” he said. “More and more people use it and so I don’t need BBM anymore.”

At the same time, higher-end users have deserted what is increasingly seen as a low-end brand.

“When they came up with the cheaper versions, that took the allure off the brand for many Indonesians who are very status-conscious,” said Ong Hock Chuan, a Jakarta-based communications consultant.

ANDROID MAKES INROADS

While BlackBerry remained the number one smartphone brand in Indonesia in the second quarter of last year, the most recent period for which rankings were available, Android overtook it as the most popular operating system, according to IDC.

IDC said when it released the data last September that this was partly because of delays in the launch of the BlackBerry 10. The Z10 is likely to launch in the second half of February in India and in late March in Indonesia.

Data from StatCounter, a website which estimates mobile web traffic, shows BlackBerry’s share in Indonesia falling from about 20 percent in 2011 to about 5 percent last year.

On the other hand, carriers and users say, glitches with BlackBerry services and a perception that the brand has lost some of its luster mean that it will be hard to sell the Z10 and a keyboard model, the Q10, even to better-off users.

“It really depends on how BlackBerry 10 performs. If it can fix problems of previous BlackBerry (services) it could succeed in the market,” said Hasnul Suhaimi, CEO of Indonesia’s XL Axiata. But for now, he said, “it will just be about people swapping out existing devices.”

To reverse this, BlackBerry must announce cheaper devices quickly, analysts say. BlackBerry launched handsets designed on its old platform for just such users in India and Indonesia last year.

“The Z10… is obviously a high-end product and India is not a market at that price point,” said Anshul Gupta, an industry analyst at technology advisory firm Gartner in Mumbai. “We don’t know exactly what will be coming here, but I would expect them to launch different models in India which would give them more traction.”

(Additional reporting by Henry Foy in Mumbai and Jeremy Wagstaff in Singapore; Writing by Jeremy Wagstaff; Editing by Emily Kaiser)

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