Mobile News
In the latest issue of Fortune Magazine, Jessi Hempel writes about how Blackberry is able to stay at the top of the smartphone industry in an article entitled, “How BlackBerry Does It”. With all of the hype that iPhone brings, it is interesting to note that Blackberry still crushes it. In fact, as of May 2009, BlackBerry had 3 out of the top 5 selling phones in the US. Here is how it was ranked:
- RIM BlackBerry Curve (all 83XX models)
- Apple iPhone 3G (all models)
- RIM BlackBerry Storm
- RIM BlackBerry Pearl (all models, except flip)
- T-Mobile G1
This was prior to the release of Sprint’s new push for the Palm Pre, however, I don’t think that the numbers changed that much. Research in Motion, RIM, is the company behind all of the BlackBerry creativity. It is interesting to note that in the past decade, RIM has sold 65 million phones to its now 28.5 million subscribers. Additionally, RIM has a 56% share of the $12 billion U.S. smartphone market. The reason for this is that since the introduction of the iPhone in June of 2007, people have been accustomed to smartphones being the norm instead of just for business people. IN fact, last quarter, 80% of new blackberry subscribers came from a non-business crowd. Since iPhone’s introduction, BlackBerry quarterly sales have more than tripled, from $1.1 billion to $3.4 billion.
While this seems like a mutual partnership, soon it will not be. The smartphone market has been busted open by the iPhone and now everyone is trying to cash in. Google will be releasing two additional phones with its android platform this upcoming fall. Addtionally, now, 20% employers are allowing their workers to use iphones instead of BlackBerrys. You can see where they start to clash now.
Furthermore, BlackBerry understands the need for applications and widgets on their phones so they have released BlackBerry App World, a storefront for BlackBerry applications. They even give more money to developers than iPhone does for their development royalties (80% to 70%).
Interesting article. Here are a couple of stats from the article that you guys might enjoy:
- In 2008, a total of 1.19 billion mobile phones were sold worldwide, according to IDC, of which some 155 billion were smartphones, or 13%.
- In 2013, IDC predicts that 20% of the 1.4 billion phones sold will be smartphones, or 280 million.
- As of Q1 2009, Nokia owned 41% of the global smartphone market, RIM owned 20%, Apple owned 11% and 28% was owned by others.
- Apple boasts some 65,000 apps, Android has 5,000+, and BlackBerry has about 2,000.
- Juniper Research estimates sales of mobile phone apps could hit $25 billion in 2014, up from $7 billion last year.
Posted by Dan Doromal
August 25th, 2009 in Mobile News
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