Friday, December 18, 2009

iPhone Now in Second Place In US

So as we deliberate our next mobile we read in Computerworld that the US iPhone user base is now bigger than Windows Mobile-based models and now only second to Research In Motion's (RIM) BlackBerry. It was therefore also interesting to note that yesterday RIM suffered a serious cross network outage that effected all consumer BlackBerry users in the US. Interestingly corporate users appear not to have been affected and the outage was apparently caused by some "routine" RIM maintenance work that occurred at around 2:00 a.m. US Central time on Thursday. This is not the first serious outage, in April 2007 had a 12-hour email outage and they also suffered again in February of last year.

However Apple continues to grow unchecked and it is now claimed that around 9 million Americans now use the iPhone as primary phone. It still is way behind RIM’s 15 million but with each glitch and the emergence of more apps the writing could be on the wall for that device which was built on email.

According to comScore, some 36 million Americans own a smartphone, while around 196 million rely on a traditional cell phone. So the market has significant potential and the capacity for five times more growth in the US alone.

The interesting challenger is the Android pack with devives such as the Motorola Droid and the Google aPhone. We don’t envisage Palm as a contender and Nokia are spreading their bets but are in danger of losing the plot.

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