BlackBerry, formerly Research In Motion, says that its new devices have been well-received in Europe. 

According to a report from TechCrunch, BlackBerry’s UK marketing director, Stephen Bates, speaking at the company’s European developer conference in Amsterdam, said reception of the Z10 has “exceeded expectations,” adding that some retailers had sold out of the device. 

BlackBerry refrained from offering up any specific sales numbers. 

At the event, BlackBerry provided developers with updates to the BlackBerry 10 developer toolkit, new benefits of the reward  programs, and the opening of app submissions in the BlackBerry World storefront vendor portal for the BlackBerry Q10 smartphone.

The event follows closely on the heels of the global launch of the BlackBerry Z10 and BlackBerry Q10 smartphones on January 30. BlackBerry apparently issued a developer-only crimson red Z10 to all developers in attendance. 

Developer support of BlackBerry will weigh heavily in the success of its new devices. The company needs a strong application portfolio if it is to claw back some market share from platforms like iOS and Android. 

Google continued to dominate the market in the third quarter, according to ComScore’s numbers. Android took a 53.7 percent share of the global market, up 1.1 percent, as compared with Apple’s iOS at 35 percent. BlackBerry fell in at 7.3 percent, and Microsoft’s Windows Mobile at 3 percent. Symbian took a slim half percent of the market.