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BlackBerry’s Era May Be Ending

Research In Motion’s future looks bleak. R.I.M., which makes the popular BlackBerry devices, has had a traditional stronghold in sales to American companies. But that has been cracked open.

Apple said last week that more than 80 percent of the Fortune 100 companies were testing or deploying its iPhone. Meanwhile, phones usingGoogle’s Android operating system appear to be making inroads, too. That spells trouble for R.I.M.

Corporations and consumers used to be happy with handsets that served up e-mail reliably, promptly and securely. R.I.M.’s products do this very well. Now, though, Android and Apple handsets adequately handle e-mail, while also doing much more. For instance, iPhone users can download about 30 times as many apps as are available to BlackBerry users, and the process is more user-friendly.

R.I.M.’s share of the American smartphone market reflects this shift. It fell to 41 percent in the first quarter from 55 percent in the previous year, according to Gartner. The combined share held by iPhones and Android handsets rose to 49 percent, from 23 percent over the same period.

True, R.I.M.’s sales in overseas markets are increasing, enabling it to hold its share of the global smartphone market more or less steady. But handset trends increasingly originate in the United States because of the growing importance of smartphone software.

READ MORE HERE

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4. Apple’s Surprise iPhone Press Conference [Live Coverage] #iphone #apple
5. **BREAKING NEWS** Verizon to Start Selling iPhone in January

This entry was posted on Friday, July 30th, 2010 at 12:08 pm. It is filed under Blahg and tagged with blackberry, ending, era, RIM, to an end. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.