More US Customers Are Returning The New BlackBerry Phone Than Keeping It, Analyst Report Says*

BlackBerry's stock is tanking this morning following a report from ITG Investment research that says sales of the company's new BlackBerry Z10 phone are weak in the US.

In many cases, more people are returning the Z10 than keeping it and overall demand for the phone in the US is very weak, according to another report from Detwiler Fenton & Co., as cited by Bloomberg.

The Z10 launched in late March on Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T, but early reports say those carriers haven't done a great job at promoting the phone. AT&T was the first carrier to sell the phone and many stores didn't even have demo units on display on launch day.

BlackBerry's stock is down 5.4% as of this writing, trading at $13.89 per share.

UPDATE: BlackBerry disagrees. It sent out a statement to all press today saying Z10 returns are normal compared to other smartphones. BlackBerry closed down about 7.7% today.

Here's the statement:

BlackBerry wishes to respond to media coverage today regarding speculation that there have been abnormally high levels of returns of BlackBerry Z10 devices. This is absolutely false. Our data shows that return rates for BlackBerry Z10 devices both in the U.S. and on a global basis are in line with or better than our expectations and are consistent with return rates for other premium smartphones in the market today