[bluz]

All the BB lovers might want to have a look at this Communities Dominate Brands: A Bloodbath for 2010: the Smartphone market preview

[Reed McLay]

Tomi T Ahonen
is a five-time bestselling author and consultant on digital convergence and mobile telecoms, based in Hong Kong. Tomi lectures at Oxford University's short courses on high tech and convergence. ...

Impressive credentials, what does he have to say about BlackBerry?

RIM

The amazing untold success story, far bigger story than Apple, is RIM. Blackberries were nerdy US centric business phones only a few years ago. Europeans and Asians would not take to the flat, wide, weird Canadian phones. Try as they might, even as American conglomerates took to Blackberries by storm, and started to call it the Crackberry - 75% of American business/enterprise smartphones are Blackberries (says Ostermann survey in 2009)
...
On RIM, this is the only brand I can promise you, it will grow market share in 2010. Why? Because first of all, it has a 'lock' on the enterprise/corporate market. The business phone market will not shift simply because there is one hot new smartphone this quarter, like a Palm Pre or Motorola Droid or iPhone 3GS or Google Nexus One or Nokia E72. The business phone market is incredibly stable because business customer IT departments resist any change and any new systems to be added and to be supported. In the big US market, Blackberry can very safely rely on something nearly 75% of all business smartphone sold this year. It may fluctuate a little up or down, but it is incredibly stable.
...

[noaim]

interesting nice read

[Crucial_Xtreme]

RIM will definitely grow it's market share in 2010. This I 110% guarantee. Just wait and see.

[crackberryhead]

RIM & BlackBerry will rule the world!

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[bluz]

lets raise a TOAST for the continued success of RIM.

[thymaster]

Good read and I'm most intrigued by this part...

...And while all the press, analysts, pundits and 'experts' obsess about touch screen smartphones, the truth is that far more QWERTY phones are sold worldwide than touch screen phones. The internet use is not addictive, but SMS text messaging is addictive as proven in university studies like the one at Queensland University of Australia. So while both inputs are of course desirable and have their proponents, the fact is, that QWERTY trumps touch screen.

But RIM have optimized their phones for mobile messaging. It is a perfect starting point. Then they have the Blackberry instant messenger, which appeals to the youth in particular as it offers free messages between Blackberry users. That in turn brings in a contagion effect, you want to have the Blackberry specifically, because your friends use it. And then there is the cool factor, suddenly the Blackberry is the phone all older teenagers and young adults want to have. RIM is right now in a sweet spot, all things going for them. It is no surprise, that in the shadow of the world's most spectacular high tech launch ever, the iPhone - RIM has consistently outsold the iPhone and grown its own market share.

This is probably the reason why I'm hooked on my Blackberry. It's so true what he wrote.

[reeneebob]

I'm waiting for all the elites on this site who respond to ANYTHING anti-BB with "BB is a serious business phone, all others are toys or for kids" to get their panties in a twist over the fact that the article makes it plain that BB is incredibly popular with the teens/college set for texting.

You know it's coming.

[Masahiro]

This is how I feel: other platforms can do whatever they want with their phones. They could get a super fancy UI, the best browsers, a million apps and a kitty calender, but they'll all still be unusable to me as touch screen devices.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[its_a_bb_thing]

Great article, in conclusion when the MAC groupies finally except that all they have is a over-priced mp3. With limitation after limitation all users with have to grow and get a straight to business phone, hence BB is not going anywhere and rim has always evolved their designs to keep up with our need to have the best possible product.

[mciriello]

What are you talking about? No iPhone user is going to "have to grow" into a BB. By doing so, the iPhone user would lose many capabilities. Apple is much closer to capturing enterprise users (it's share is growing each year) than RIM is to developing a product which is competitive with the iPhone in terms of media, web, or apps.

RIM will continue to dominate the corporate market in the short-term not because they offer the best devices, but becuase they own the server side (BES) and they are the incumbent. Your average sales guy just wants a phone that works when he needs it and that he already knows how to use and that's what RIM offers.

Great article, in conclusion when the MAC groupies finally except that all they have is a over-priced mp3. With limitation after limitation all users with have to grow and get a straight to business phone, hence BB is not going anywhere and rim has always evolved their designs to keep up with our need to have the best possible product.

[hondateg91]

I have a feeling this is going to turn into a BB vs. Iphone thread.

[qbnkelt]

I have a feeling this is going to turn into a BB vs. Iphone thread.

NAH!!!!! What would *ever* make you say that?!?!?

Tell you though - this will be a great year for geeks. We have the fabled Dakota/slider/whatever supposedly dropping by end of year, the new webkit also possibly by end of year, the iPad (I'll include it even if it's not a phone because it's tecchie), the Apple 4G, and the beginnings of the LTE transition....

Who's got that great clip of Michael Jackson eating popcorn?!?! I can't load it from here....

[_StephenBB81]

RIM will definitely grow it's market share in 2010. This I 110% guarantee. Just wait and see.

I think if we take global Market share RIM has a near guarantee, only because they are just breaking into India, and other Asia Markets, but for the US/Canada, group, I fear they might loose a bit of Market share,
the iPhone is not yet ready for Big business, not because of lack of e-mail, but because of OLD business, much of business heavily relies on printable Office documents, and Docs2Go on Apple devices is not nearly as good as Docs2Go on Blackberry devices, I purchased a iPod Touch specifically to use as a large screen Office assistant to my blackberry's and I have to keep using the blackberry for speed of rendering excel files, and searching.

I do agree with the Article that Keyboard phones are the way to go for heavy messaging, and less then clean environments.

[dwaynewilliams#WN]

That's interesting. I do agree with some of the points made, but there is no accounting for the taste and reasoning of consumers. There may be a shift and it could happen soon. Or there may not be. You can never tell. Last year I would have thought Microsoft was nearing extinction in the mobile market, but their devices very well could be the must have items by the end of the year. Incidentally, I do think as consumers we put to much emphasis on which smartphone manufacturer is the best. In the end, it shouldn't matter to consumers. Whatever fits your needs should take priority.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[PGHammer]

Great article, in conclusion when the MAC groupies finally except that all they have is a over-priced mp3. With limitation after limitation all users with have to grow and get a straight to business phone, hence BB is not going anywhere and rim has always evolved their designs to keep up with our need to have the best possible product.

And if they absolutely prefer a touchscreen phone, there's always the Storm2 (wireless) or Classic Storm (no wireless). Other than gaming, it supports multimedia (like the iPhone or any multimedia phone) not to mention that the S2 costs less than the iPhone (and, if you can do without wireless, you can get two Classic Storms for the cost of one S2).

Besides, if I want MP3s, I have a *computer* to transfer music from. (So I need iTunes why?)

[cardu3851]

interesting read.....long, but interesting nonetheless...

[MrObvious]

iPhone sucks...Blackberry sucks...here we go.

I did like the article.