RIM topples iPhone from US consumer perch as Storm 3 looms
Published: 5 May, 2009
With RIM set to launch new handsets this week, its newly aggressive tactics in the consumer market are starting to bear fruit. In the first quarter, it toppled Apple iPhone from its perch as the bestselling consumer smartphone in the US, with a Verizon Wireless 'buy one get one free' promotion on the Curve a key contributor.
According to NPD Group figures, this deal put Curve at the top of the tree, while RIM's consumer smartphone market share increased overall by 15% to nearly 50% (by NPD's definitions of 'consumer smartphone', which of course vary between different analysts). By contrast, Apple's and Palm's shares declined by about 10% each. The top five models were BlackBerry Curve (all 83xx models); Apple iPhone 3G (all models); BlackBerry Storm; BlackBerry Pearl (all models except Flip); and T-Mobile G1. The Curve was also helped by broad availability across all four national carriers.
Smartphones in general increased their share of handset sales from 17% a year ago to 23%. RIM will seek to cash in on this trend further this week when it launches its Niagara upgrade to the Storm, for Verizon, and a W-CDMA version. It is not forgetting its enterprise heartland though. At its Capital Markets day last week it said more than half its customers were now non-corporate, but nevertheless it announced release 5.0 of its BlackBerry Enterprise Server, with improved IT management; a marketing deal with Hewlett-Packard; and the BlackBerry Mobile Voice System Server for Cisco's Unified Communications Manager.
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