Research in Motion has released OS breakdown information for BlackBerry users downloading applications from BlackBerry App World, and, nearly a year after the release of BlackBerry 6, almost 1 in 5 BlackBerry users, 18% to be exact, are using the latest and greatest RIM has to offer.  The data also shows that 32% of BlackBerry users are still pre-BlackBerry OS 5.  Usually when we think of mobile OS fragmentation, Android is the platform that jumps to mind, but, things are just as bad for the BlackBerry OS, and, they are soon going to get worse….

Uptake of BlackBerry 6 has jumped 8% in the three months since we last talked about it, but, 82% of BlackBerry users on an operating system at least one version back.  This will jump to two versions back as soon as RIM releases BlackBerry 7, expected to ship sometime in the next 2 to 3 months.  The real problem for RIM is that everyone who cares knows that RIM intends to replace BlackBerry 7 with QNX in ‘early 2012’.

If it took a year for RIM to get 18% adoption on BlackBerry 6, does it really make sense for developers to focus development efforts on BlackBerry 7 when they know that QNX is coming, and, coming hard?