Everybody knows we have our first Blackberry-toting president, but how many know that BlackBerry outsells Apple?
An aggressive “buy-one-get-one†promotion by Verizon Wireless helped RIM’s BlackBerry Curve move past Apple’s iPhone to become the best-selling consumer smartphone in the U.S. in the first quarter of 2009, according to market research firm The NPD Group.
RIM’s consumer smartphone market share increased by 15 percent to nearly half of the entire smartphone market in Q1 2009 versus the prior quarter. Apple’s and Palm’s market share both declined 10 percent each.
Part of this is driven by the new iPhone coming around in June, but Curve is not exactly state of the art in the Blackberry world. Take this as another example of conventional wisdom not being too wise.
The really big news is the growth of smart phones in market share, 17% to 23%. All kinds of product sales are down, especially the higher end products. But not in this category.
Very unscientific: Most of my smarter friends buy either the Blackberry or the iPhone now. Very curious to see how this contest evolves over the long term – one quarter’s data is not enough to declare a winner, especially in a sub-segment that is still fragmented in the US and globally.