Even though the BlackBerry smartphone has steadily lost market share to its competitors in 2010 BlackBerry brand awareness has grown stronger according to the third annual Vitrue 100 which annually ranks the most social brands by analyzing online conversations on a daily basis across social networks blogs, micro-blogs, photo and video sharing sites using the Vitrue Social Media Index (SMI).
The BlackBerry brand ranks number 2 moving up 13 spots from last years ranking in the consumer electronics category and also ranks number 2 overall following the iPhone which has ranked number 1 in all three years of the survey.
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For those of you not aware, CES, the biggest consumer electronics show of the year, starts Thursday with a bunch of announcements likely coming tomorrow, and, the big question for me is ” What will Research in Motion have to say?” We know that the BlackBerry PlayBook is coming and that QNX will eventually power a BlackBerry device, however, I’d like to know what else Research in Motion has coming down the pipe, namely in the way of BlackBerry devices.
It’s been 6 months since RIM has released a high-end CMDA BlackBerry and Verizon BlackBerry Storm and Storm2 users especially, with no BlackBerry Storm3 or other Touchscreen device in sight, have seemingly been left out in the cold. This could be the perfect opportunity for RIM to announce a new CDMA BlackBerry with a touch screen, even if it only runs BlackBerry 6.
There are rumors that Apple may officially announce the Verizon iPhone this week,and, if there is no good news on the BlackBerry front coming out RIM, the BlackBerry platform may see many more BlackBerry users switching platforms compared to those that a going to switch regardless of what RIM has to say…
Let’s hope that RIM has good new for us this week
It’s been just over a month since the iPhone overtook the BlackBerry in total U.S. market share and as we begin 2011, Apple still is in the top spot. This may not be the case for to long, however, because Android is poised to overtake RIM and Apple with the ridiculous growth that the platform is experiencing.
According to November 2010 data, Apple holds 28.6 percent of the U.S. smartphone market up slightly from 27.9 percent in October. Meanwhile, BlackBerry OS slipped again in November to 26.1 percent, down from 27.4 percent in October and 33.9 percent in June. Android OS closed the distance on Apple and RIM reaching 25.8 percent in November, compared to 22.7 percent in October and 15 percent in June.
It’s pretty clear that Android will over take RIM relatively soon. This would probably be true for Apple as well if it weren’t for the the fact that the iPhone is soon coming to Verizon. My gut tells me that the Verizon iPhone will become the fast selling smartphone ever and will probably hold of Android for a bit longer, while increasing the speed of the BlackBerry’s decline as the churn of current Verizon BlackBerry users that switch to the iPhone will probably be at all time high levels.
[Via Gigaom]
Consumer Reports has released findings from a member survey which, as we’ve been saying for years, ranks AT&T as the worst wireless provider in the country when it comes to voice, value, and data performance. AT&T scored the lowest possible score in 8 of 9 total categories, only scoring the second to the worst score in texting.
Consumer Reports isn’t as popular as it once was, however, quite a few still value their opinion highly… AT&T is just hoping that most of their customers are don’t…
We take this seriously and we continually look for new ways to improve the customer experience. The fact is wireless customers have choices and a record number of them chose AT&T in the third quarter, significantly more than our competitors. Hard data from independent drive tests confirms AT&T has the nation’s fastest mobile broadband network with our nearest competitor 20 percent slower on average nationwide and our largest competitor 60 percent slower on average nationwide. And, our dropped call rate is within 1/10 of a percent – the equivalent of just one call in a thousand – of the industry leader.
The fact that AT&T can be rated this low, but, be the sole carrier of the highest rated device says a heck of a lot about the iPhone. My guess is that carrier churn from iPhone users switching from AT&T over to Verizon once Verizon gets the iPhone will be unprecedented.
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I just read a press release from web analytics company, StatCounter, and, believe it or not, the BlackBerry has overtaken the iPhone in mobile internet usage for the first time.
BlackBerry OS overtook Apple’s iOS for the first time in the US in November in terms of mobile internet usage according to web analytics company, StatCounter. The company’s research arm, StatCounter Global Stats finds that for the first time in the US BlackBerry OS at 34.3% overtook Apple’s iOS which recorded 33% in November.
I have to admit that this news was completely unexpected, especially now that the iPhone has overtaken the BlackBerry in U.S. smartphone market share. I would have to imagine that the WebKit BlackBerry browser in BlackBerry 6 has a lot to do with this trend. I wonder what the numbers will be like once a critical mass of BlackBerry users move over to BlackBerry 6? The Webkit BlackBerry Browser is currently only available to BlackBerry Torch 9800, BlackBerry Bold 9780, and BlackBerry Style 9670 users which are all fairly new to the market.
[Via StatCounter]
Despite the onslaught of rival smartphones like the iPhone, Android, and Windows Phone 7, Research in Motion will maintain the top spot when it comes to worldwide market share until 2015, according to a study from ABI Research.
The study found that RIM will lose market share by 2015. The research firm expects RIM’s BlackBerry to maintain 26% of the mobile operating system world market by 2015, matched by Google’s Android OS with 26%. Nokia’s Symbian OS will take 16%, Microsoft Windows OS 11% and Apple iOS 14%.
What do you think? If RIM continues to lose share as fast as they have for last two quarters they will lose their spot atop the smartphone market share hill much sooner than 2015. Can RIM do enough to hold their competitors off for the next 4 years or so? Time will certainly tell…
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I was reading an interview of Research in Motion CEO, Mike Lazaridis, and one of the things he said that I found very interesting was “ it is far from certain that video will become the “killer app” that defines smartphones”. I’ve go to ask the question..
Is Big Mike aware that smartphones other than BlackBerry devices actually do quite well?
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