iPhone Outsells BlackBerry
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James Joyner | Sunday, November 9, 2008 |
Apple’s iPhone is now outselling RIM’s BlackBerry, Gizmodo reports.
Apple, just a year and a half into the smartphone business, now has a higher marketshare than Canadian giant Research in Motion, and is second place only to Nokia. Apple’s 17.3% share is just barely beating out RIM’s 15.2%, and of course is nowhere near Nokia’s 38.9%, but it’s just one more sign of how important the iPhone really is.
The iPhone 3G’s launch throughout the rest of the world has had a huge effect on sales, and the phone has sold nearly 7 million since its July 11 debut. Apple’s share of the entire cell phone market is now 2.3%, a pretty respectable number, and has pushed Microsoft’s ailing Windows Mobile platform off the medal platform into 4th place.
Ars Technica notes that the competition is fighting back, with “BlackBerry launching new Storm, Bold, and Pearl models; and Google jumping in the fray with its Linux-based Android smartphone OS, competition for the smartphone market has never been hotter.
The iPhone has been much hyped, so I’m not surprised it’s doing so well. I am, however, rather shocked that Nokia is in first place. “BlackBerry” is almost a generic name for the genre, much like “Xerox” was in the photocopying business.
I use their Curve model, which I’ve had for a year and a half or so, and am relatively pleased with it. It’s not a great Web browsing tool, mostly because it doesn’t support Javascript, but it’s a decent phone and an excellent email device and a mediocre camera. The circumstances in which I’d want my phone to double as a portable music player or entertainment system are rare indeed, since I’ve got music in my car and carry a notebook computer when I travel.
About the Author: James Joyner is the publisher of Outside the Beltway and the managing editor of the Atlantic Council. He's a former Army officer, Desert Storm vet, and college professor with a PhD in political science from The University of Alabama. He lives just outside the Beltway in Alexandria, Virginia with his wife and infant daughter.
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I am, however, rather shocked that Nokia is in first place.
The market the article refers to is worldwide. Just because Blackberry dominates the U.S. market doesn't make it so elsewhere.
James if you have a T-Mobile (or unlocked) Curve you should upgrade to the 4.5 operating system that came out two weeks back. The web browser is far superior! And it does support JavaScript (actually it has always supported JS, but you have to enable it in the preferences and it was/is quite slow).
Personally, I moved on to an unlocked Bold. It's extremely nice. The iPhone can't touch it for email.
By "Nokia" they probably actually mean "Symbian", which is the operating system used by the vast majority of smart phones.
My wife has a BlackBerry, and I've been less than impressed with it myself. I keep hoping for a 2nd generation Neo Freerunner with better hardware, but will probably settle for whatever Android phone first comes out for CDMA networks so that I don't have to change providers.
By "Nokia" they probably actually mean "Symbian", which is the operating system used by the vast majority of smart phones.
No, they mean handsets:
Nokia shipped more units in the fourth quarter [of '06] than the next three vendors' shipment volumes combined. This, Nokia executives pointed out, was the result of its streamlined operations, which produced on average nearly 1.5 million units each day during the quarter. This number could have been even higher if the company did not have to deal with component shortages during production.
