Blackberry Curve overtakes iPhone as number one in U.S. smartphone sales

May 5, 2009 – 10:28 am – No Comment

Thanks to the “buy one get one free” campaign that has been running with the Blackberry Curve, the smartphone has overtaken the Apple iPhone in U.S. smartphone sales.

Blackberry maker Research In Motion increased its share of the U.S. smartphone market to 50 percent in the quarter — up 15 percentage points from the previous three months, the research firm said. By contrast, the market shares of both Apple and Palm declined 10 percent.

RIM’s success was largely due to Verizon’s aggressive marketing of the BlackBerry Storm and its buy-one-get-one BlackBerry promotion to its large customer base, explained NPD Group Director Ross Rubin. “The more familiar, and less expensive, Curve benefited from these giveaways and was able to leapfrog the iPhone due to its broader availability on the four major U.S. national carriers,” Rubin said. Source

Blackberry is, and will likely be for some time, the company to beat in smartphone sales. As more people, who may not necessarily be business users, begin buying more data-centric phones then there will be a larger market for smartphones and there may be some room for another brand such as HTC to take some market share away from RIM, Apple and Palm.

Of course, there will always be consumers, like me, who will go for the cheaper plan versus the cheaper phone. I don’t have a Blackberry because, on Sprint, it was an extra $30 a month for the Blackberry plan, while my Palm didn’t cost anything extra. Now, I’ve come to the realization that if I really want to get a “next-generation” phone then I will have to upgrade to a more expensive plan (but it was nice while it lasted).