Things have been better for Palm. The company that essentially sparked the smartphone revolution and ushered in a new age of corporate handset fleets is now seeing their market share chipped away from enterprise competitor Research In Motion (RIM) and its line of BlackBerry smartphones.
The corporate customer-base is undoubtedly Palm’s most-lucrative niche – the Treo is almost a status symbol among suits. And, that makes this latest research study from ChangeWave all the more disturbing. ChangeWave has apparently tallied (although their research methods weren’t disclosed) the number of Palm and RIM BlackBerry handsets that corporations issued to their workforce. The results indicate that corporations have been buying up and distributing more and more RIM BlackBerry smartphones while Palm’s share of corporate purchases are dwindling ever so slowly.
Palm handsets saw their enterprise smartphones used in 28% of companies surveyed in February 2007, but after just a year, Palm was chosen by only 18% of companies. Conversely, 59% of companies chose to issue RIM BlackBerry handsets last year, with 73% of companies having chosen the BlackBerry in February 2008.
Anecdotal evidence also suggests that the ChangeWave survey is more or less on point. More and more corporate acquaintances are getting issued a BlackBerry, leaving Palm further behind. If Palm doesn’t fix their business model soon, we could see the PDA pioneer fade even further into Treo-history.
[Via: Palm Infocenter]