Ya dun goofed, RIM: BlackBerry usage share plunges to 1% in U.S.

Sad story after sad story after sad story — that is the life of Research in Motion, otherwise known as RIM. What’s the latest sad story for the crumbling company? BlackBerry usage share in the United States has plunged down to just 1 percent. That is according to Chitika’s mobile web usage statistics.

In fact, between September 2011 and July 2012, BlackBerry’s share dropped 25 percent. During this time it peaked in October at 5 percent but in the months after that, it never even sprung back up enough to hit 2 percent.

Meanwhile, in the land of the most valuable company on the face of the planet, the Apple iPhone’s usage share grew 35 percent within the same time period, from 46 percent to now at 64 percent. Chitika didn’t talk of Android’s numbers, but I suspect it’s doing pretty damn well too — or at least better than BlackBerry, which isn’t exactly a hard feat to accomplish.

“A widely shared belief is that RIM’s lackluster response to the iPhone was a critical mistake that cost BlackBerry its top market position late last decade,” Chitika writes in its report. It later adds, “If RIM is to survive, it is either going to need to integrate its hardware and software to create a stunning, unique device, or change its business model to focus only on creating the hardware or software for smartphones – a move that has already been addressed by RIM executives.”

RIM is banking on the BlackBerry 10 operating system in 2013 to turn things around, but with Android and iOS already dominating the market, it won’t be easy.

[via BGR]