Research In Motion’s BlackBerry smartphones are starting to look like Droid food as devices made by Motorola and HTC running Google’s Android operating system gobble up an increasing share of Verizon Wireless customers.
New data from ITG Research, published online by The Wall Street Journal, show that BlackBerry devices from Canada-based RIM plunged from 90 percent of sales at the nation’s largest carrier in October 2009 to just under 20 percent last month.
‘Incredible’ Rise
During that time, sales of smartphones made by Motorola, including its popular Droid and Droid X devices, climbed from an almost-flatlined under 10 percent last October to almost 40 percent last month. HTC, which makes the Droid Incredible, rose from under 10 percent to just under 20 percent.
Eighty percent of Verizon’s sales are now powered by Android devices, and 46 percent of those are Verizon’s branded Droid phones made by Motorola and HTC, Matthew Goodman of ITG Research told the Journal’s Digital Daily blog.
The first Droid hit the market in November 2009, followed by the Droid Incredible in April, the Droid X in July, and the Droid 2 in August. The Droids stand out because of their fast processors and large screen size.
RIM is still Verizon’s second-biggest smartphone supplier, with 3,411,000 units sold this year, according to the data, compared with Motorola’s 5,002,000, and both companies trail Samsung in overall device sales with 10,846,000.
Resistance Is Futile?
But RIM faces an uphill battle trying to regain market share, especially if the widely held belief that Verizon will begin carrying Apple’s top-selling iPhone next year comes true.
“[RIM] will never be able to complete with Android on [market] share as a free open-sourced OS platform that has many OEM vendors using its software in their devices versus a proprietary system like BlackBerry,” said wireless industry analyst Kirk Parsons of J.D. Power and… Details
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