As much as the the blogosphere, myself included, have been ragging on BlackBerry maker Research in Motion, the company still sells a ridiculous number of smartphones. Shipping 10.6 million devices between January and March, RIM is now the world’s 4th largest phone manufacturer with 3.6% market share.
Check out the rest of the top 5 after the jump…
Top Five Mobile Phone Vendors, Shipments, and Market Share, Q1 2010 (Units in Millions)
| Vendor | 1Q10 Unit Shipments | 1Q10 Market Share | 1Q09 Unit Shipments | 1Q09 Market Share | Year-over-year Change |
| 1. Nokia | 107.8 | 36.6% | 93.2 | 38.4% | 15.7% |
| 2. Samsung | 64.3 | 21.8% | 45.9 | 18.9% | 40.1% |
| 3. LG Electronics | 27.1 | 9.2% | 22.6 | 9.3% | 19.9% |
| 4. Research In Motion | 10.6 | 3.6% | 7.3 | 3.0% | 45.2% |
| 4. Sony Ericsson | 10.5 | 3.6% | 14.5 | 6.0% | -27.6% |
| Others | 74.6 | 25.3% | 58.9 | 24.3% | 26.7% |
| Total | 294.9 | 100.0% | 242.4 | 100.0% | 21.7% |
Even though RIM’s 3.6% share putting them into 4th place pales in comparison to Nokia’s 36.6%, year over year growth for the BlackBerry outpaced everyone at 45.2%. Additionally, RIM only sells smartphones. Their counterparts on the list, however, sell mostly feature phones.
At the end of the day, Research in Motion isn’t nearly as bad off as a lot of us tech bloggers make them out to be…
[Source IDC]
Now i hope everyone understands they are a huge manufacturer and are not going anywhere.
I don’t think the question was ever of RIM’s overall survival. The question was can they hold market share on the consumer front? Some people like it for the form factor alone. BUt, now that carriers are requiring data plans, what compels someone to keep this device over one that allows them to have a richer data experience? This is what will determine their future on the consumer front. They may very well go back to being business only… and I must say even business users are compelled to have a better data/browser experience than Blackberry currently offers. Seeing as the company is called RIM, they could very easily have a Blackberry line (for business) and a Cloudberry (for consumer), but they instead try to be all things to all people (and lean more to not losing the business side in all their actions). So, RIM will still be around. But, will they have the consumer share they desire? Jury is still out. I think the only thing holding the consumers is something oft used by business… bbm.