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Recent Reviews
BlackBerry lost 1.8m users in the last three months
Posted:
November 13, 2011
By: ccsoya
9 comments
A massive service outage spanning over three days, an appalling financial outlook, lackluster sales of its recently released Bold 9900 and now this. Boy, things are getting from bad to worse for RIM and Blackberry.
Data from comScore’s Mobilens survey reveals that RIM lost 1.8 million user in the US in the third quarter of this year. Even more damaging, the fall comes after RIM loss 1 million subscribers in the second quarter. In contrast, Google’s Android user base grew 7.78 million subscribers and Apple grew 3.19 million users in the same period.
Overall, RIM is the only manufacturer that is seeing its market share rapidly dwindling while Google emerged as the clear leader in US smartphone growth followed by Apple. Microsoft and even Symbian are also seeing growth — albeit at a slower pace — in the same quarter.
The figures will be seriously disappointing for RIM, which has built up a huge inventory of BlackBerry 7 phones and PlayBook tablets. This explains the global trend of reducing prices and bundling BlackBerry devices together to get as much BlackBerry units off store as quickly as possible.
BlackBerry users, what are your thoughts? Are you still with BlackBerry or have you shifted to Android or iPhone?
Table showing how the brands stack up after the jump.
Click for larger image
[via]
9 Comments for BlackBerry lost 1.8m users in the last three months
Firdaus
Its frustatingly difficult to use blackcerry with its dependance on the BIS service. At times, we can connect to 3G or wifi but the BIS not available, thus making the device practically useless to get on the net. Better off with an Android device or Iphone. Even on my iphone I still can get emails pushed to it. Their only life line is the corporate users and its enterprise service. Its going down..really.
Stonecold Stunner
ditched my bb since jan ..still under bb "rip off" contract though, lousy small screen phone,,,,,,
R.I.P….
Syafeeq
Tempted to get BB9900 but i wait for bbx
kumar
Spent 1 year plus playing with Android on the Galaxy S – the OS is very powerful, the web browser is 2nd to none and the apps and games are almost if not the same high quality as iOS apps. Playing with custom ROMs, custom kernels, system tweaks and customising the UI/launcher/theme was real fun but a big time waster after a while. I had to finally sit down and analyse what I actually needed in a smartphone – excellent phone features, cloud sync with Google, convenient text entry, good battery life, push mail for 3 of my most important email accounts, real time twitter, facebook, foursquare notifications, and always-on chat via gtalk and whatsapp.
In the end, I settled for a BB. Am quite happy with my 9810 with OS7. I now spend time less time tinkering with the phone and I love being able to pull out my phone from the pocket, slide it open, respond to notifications quickly and then put the phone back in the pocket. Yes, I do miss my apps and games and videos, but since I still have my Galaxy Tab P1000 for those things I am not too deprived 
I may likely come back to Android once a phone manufacturer releases a top-end android phone with a front-facing qwerty hardware keyboard like on the BB, but for now, I am not too keen on big screened pure touch phones..
Sid Acidic
Jon Retinger from TechnoBuffalo convert to BB with same reason like you .
nate
take note, the data is US data, would be totally or slightly different with the whole world users, i believe blackberry is still strong here even in malaysia, perhaps even better, especially since bb users in malaysia r becoming increasingly youth-centric
Wan Kay
the original report here http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releas…
If read carefully, it say nothing about losing 1.8m user. Its just that RIM's market share down 0.8% – and this is not necessarily means that RIM had lost their existing users that much; its just that they didn't gained new users as much as other manufacturers did.
Hafeez
I truly agree with you. From most of the reports and articles that I have read, those data much represents North America's, where BBs really flop. But different situations in Canada & Europe where BB still have strong foundation in those regions. BB users are growing too in Malaysia, & I hope we don't look at these datas as a representation of how BB truly sucks, when the figures were only meant to describe the environment in North Am only. Besides, BBs security is still much reliable.
OS 6 devices cannot be upgraded to OS7. OS7 devices cannot be upgraded to QNX. Each platform launched or is slated to arrive one year apart from its predecessor. You've effectively laid out your products' obsolescence roadmap, i.e. good for a year only.
Who in their right mind would buy a BlackBerry now? At most, if they're still interested in BB, they'd wait till the phones run QNX.
Question is: what if even QNX bombs out?