Once mighty BlackBerry will have fewer users than Windows Phone by years end

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Once mighty BlackBerry will have fewer users than Windows Phone by years end

Remember the days when owning a BlackBerry phone was considered cool? Yeah, its hard but Research In Motion’s (RIMs) continued decline is getting worse. By the end of the year, it is expected that the number of phones with BlackBerry OS will be less than those sporting Windows Phone OS. That’s low. Windows Phone doesn’t even have to pick up much market share because BlackBerry is falling so fast.

According to Ars Technica, BlackBerry has already fallen to three percent, down from from just six percent at the beginning of the year. Windows Phone OS is currently sitting at one percent. What is sad is that even with Windows torpedoing further sales of its Windows Phone 7.5 handsets, BlackBerry is expected to slide to just one and a half percent of the market by December of this year. Windows is expected to pick up a bit because of the expected release of Windows Phone 8 devices.


Even though RIM’s market share is currently tanking that doesn’t mean that it will go the way of Palm, which effectively ceased to exist after finally releasing WebOS and being bought by HP. Bloomberg reported earlier this month, that like Palm, RIM is pinning its hopes on a much delayed new operating system called BlackBerry 10 and based on QNX software “used in cars, nuclear plants and military drones.” RIM is also hoping to be able to license its new OS while also building its own devices, a trend that seems to be catching on.

Bloomberg also reported that RIM hopes to license BlackBerry10 to more than the usual devices.


In Heins’s vision for RIM, the company will expand the scope of its devices beyond BlackBerry smartphones and PlayBook tablets into other areas of mobile computing and what he calls machine-to-machine communications.

ZNET reported that another RIM was also expecting its new devices to be a type of “convergence device” that would span work and personal roles. So one phone might have two different cell phone plans while allowing you to switch back and forth between your work network and personal line. That could ultimately be a nightmare. Supposedly one side would be “sandboxed” from the other so that if you left the company they would only wipe one portion of your phone leaving your personal side in tact. With the general paranoia that most corporations exhibit, I can’t see them being content with that.

Whatever RIM has up its sleeve, it had better be something pretty amazing or that slide to one and a half percent may be thought of as the “good old days.”

Posted in: Cell phones,Microsoft,Software,Technology