Canalys has released the results of their U.S. smartphone market share research for the third quarter of 2011, and BlackBerry is in rough shape. At this time last year, RIM commanded 24%, just barely behind Apple’s 26%. Now BlackBerry claims only 9% of U.S. smartphone owners. Sure, Apple has lost a bit of ground, and currently sits at 20%, but that’s thanks in no small part to HTC snagging 24% market share, and Samsung not being too far behind with 21%. With 120.4 million smartphones sold overall, the worldwide market grew by 49% since last year.
Between the big service outage, the long wait for a new smartphone platform, and the dated BlackBerry devices that RIM continues to pump out, it’s no surprise that folks are starting to jump ship. RIM’s new BBX platform is still a ways out from getting into the public’s hands, so odds are we’ll have at least another couple of quarters of decline before there’s even a hint of BlackBerry market share recovering in the U.S. Aside from that, it’s interesting to see HTC buck the global trend of Samsung dominance in smartphones within the U.S., and even weirder to see Apple take third place in, well, anything.
RIM has a habit of touting their strong international growth, which has been backed up by Canalys – the same research showed they grew 59% and 56% in APAC and EMEA regions, respectively. Still, with a swath of entry-level Android (and soon Windows Phone) devices coming to market, that lead in foreign markets may not last. Until BBX phones come out, will BlackBerry be able to weather the storm well enough to keep its existing market footholds?
[pic]