Blackberry gained market share a few years ago because it really was the first portable and email device, before the term 'smartphones' really meant very much to the consumer. And that's probably because it wasn't a consumer product offering lots of applications, nor was it really a multi-tasking OS to facilitate other business corporate functions, but it did bring simplicity to email access for the masses on the move. Today, corporate users are demanding so much more, like access to customer order management, supply chain management or customer invoicing - Apps that perform business functions.
Last quarter ending May 31st saw RIM sales down from $11.8 M to $11.2 M, not just in the U.S. but worldwide. While that is not a big decline, it is against the current trend of smartphone sales.
With security features beefed up in the iPhone 4, the barriers to corporate use have vanished. A recent survey by Forrester Research shows that around 29% of IT departments now support the iPhone, up from 17% in 2009. On the Apps side, corporate Apps such as Salesforce.com are now available and downloads for the iPhone have exceeded 500,000 thus outnumbering Blackbery users three to one. This spells trouble for Blackberry.
Between Android, Web OS and iPhone, there really is a diminishing reason to consider Blackberry and it's weak touchscreen feature. With iPhones coming to Verizon in early 2011, that could mean 8-9 M iPhone sales directly cutting into Blackberry sales on Verizon.
The iPhone 4 is just so far superior and there are many super Android smartphones still coming over the next few months.
Are you a Blackberry user and what smarphones are you considering as your next upgrade?
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