Canadian smartphone maker BlackBerry says its new low-cost Q5 unit is intended for emerging markets where smartphone use hasn't yet reached a saturation point.

"I know this is going be a big hit," Chief Executive Officer Thorsten Heins said as he revealed the Q5 and its BlackBerry-classic QWERTY keyboard and 3.1-inch touchscreen at the BlackBerry Live conference in Orlando, Fla.

Available in multiple colors, the Q5 will go on sale in July in "selected markets" in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Latin America, CNN Money reported Tuesday.

The plastic-clad Q5 will run the Canadian company's BlackBerry 10 operating system.

While the Q5 won't be coming to the United States, it's seen as critical to BlackBerry's ongoing success, because the company's top markets are in lower-income countries where a low-cost BlackBerry 10 device could garner much-needed sales for the company.

Heins made no secret of that fact.

"This is specifically designed and built for selected markets, such as emerging markets; it's a sleek, slim, high-performance device," he said.

BlackBerry hoping to move away from ported Android apps
Orlando, Fla. (UPI) May 14, 2013 - Blackberry says a fifth of its app catalog is made up of programs ported from Android -- and the Canadian smartphone maker's faithful aren't too happy about it.

While most existing Android apps ported to run on devices running the company's BlackBerry 10 operating system work, they can't access all the major features of BlackBerry devices, the company acknowledged.

"From a commercial perspective, users hate them," Alec Saunders, head of developer relations at BlackBerry, told CNET. "Our partners who have ported apps get dinged for them."

Hoping to get its app library off to a flying start, BlackBerry allowed developers to port over their existing Android apps to quickly get on BlackBerry and test the waters.

But it's not the ideal situation, Saunders said; while it allowed BlackBerry to quickly fill it app library, the company wants to concentrate on apps that are more innovative and can do more on a BlackBerry device.

The approach seems to be working; whereas last year 47 percent of developers said they were likely to develop on BlackBerry 10, that number now stands at 88 percent, CNET reported.