The Middle East is a "priority market" for launching BlackBerry 10, the new smartphone platform the struggling Research In Motion (RIM) hopes will be its saviour.
The Canadian handset maker has pinned its hopes on smartphones running the new operating system amid fears the company may be in terminal decline because of fierce competition from its rivals Apple and Samsung.
Frank Boulben, the newly appointed chief marketing officer at RIM, said one or more countries in the Middle East would be included in the initial launch of BlackBerry 10.
"The Middle East will be one of our priority markets for the launch of BlackBerry 10," he said. "We will be launching globally in the early part of 2013, during the first quarter."
Mr Boulben, who previously worked for Vodafone and Orange, was appointed in May following a broader management reshuffle as RIM looks to reinvent itself after a disastrous performance in the smartphone business.
He said RIM was in talks with Middle East mobile-phone operators regarding the launch of the first BlackBerry 10s in the region.
Mr Boulben said it was too early to specify which regional countries would be included in the initial launch as the timing of the roll-out depended on negotiation with regional telecommunications companies.
"That is something we are currently agreeing with the respective wireless carriers," he said.
"By the end of September we will have chosen our exact launch date country-by-country."
The launch of the BlackBerry 10 operating system has been described as make or break for the once-dominant RIM, where sales in its last quarter fell by 43 per cent compared with a year earlier.
Shares in the company are currently trading at about US$7, down by about 95 per cent from their peak in 2008.
One beacon of hope for RIM has been the Middle East, where it says the number of BlackBerry subscribers is growing exponentially.
"In the last fiscal year our growth was 110 per cent year-on-year," said Mr Boulben.
"This is our fastest-growing region alongside South America, South Africa and Indonesia."
That 110 per cent growth rate, cited by the research firm GfK, is likely to decrease because it is not sustainable, said Mr Boulben.
However, he added the sales performance still represented "spectacular growth" in the region.
"I wouldn't call it a slowdown. Mechanically, the population is limited … So we cannot continue and grow exponentially with those rates. So I expect them to decrease a bit but still it's fantastic growth," he said.
The first smartphone to launch with the BlackBerry 10 (BB10) operating system will be a touch-screen model, according to media reports.
Features of BB10 will include the ability to switch between applications without returning to the home screen and an "intelligent keyboard" that will learn a user's particular way of typing.
Analysts cast doubt on whether this was enough to rescue RIM from its struggles.
"It looks like BB10 will have some distinctive features and will represent a big advance on RIM's current, ageing smartphone operating system. But it's not certain BB10 will be sufficient to rescue RIM's fortunes," said Matthew Reed, a senior analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media in Dubai.
Mr Reed added the delay in launching BB10 until the first quarter of next year could also hurt the brand.
"The likelihood is that in the meantime RIM's position in the smartphone market globally will continue to deteriorate, which could undermine the popularity it still has in the Middle East."
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