Canucks have turned their back on homegrown Research In Motion.
“Research In Motion Ltd. has been ousted from the top spot for smartphone shipments in its home market for the first time, trailing Apple Inc.’s iPhone,” Hugo Miller reports for Bloomberg. “RIM, based in Waterloo, Ontario, shipped 2.08 million BlackBerrys last year in Canada, compared with 2.85 million units for Apple, data compiled by IDC and Bloomberg show. In 2010, the BlackBerry topped the iPhone by half a million, and in 2008, the year after the iPhone’s debut, RIM outsold Apple by almost five to one.”
“BlackBerry, one of the biggest consumer brands to emerge from Canada, had enjoyed more loyalty among locals who embraced its made-in-Canada roots. BlackBerry’s loss of domestic preeminence shows the iPhone’s user-friendly features and wealth of apps trump other considerations, said Paul Taylor, a fund manager at BMO Harris Private Banking in Toronto,” Miller reports. “‘For RIM, in its home market, to lose that No. 1 position to iPhone is strategically important,’ said Taylor, who manages about $15 billion in assets, including RIM and Apple shares. ‘It does identify, even with a home-country bias, how consumers are responding to the greater functionality of the iPhone.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: There is a pervasive stench in Waterloo. That stench is death. Apple’s dinosaur slaughter proceeds apace.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Fred Mertz,” “Yelkin,” and “David E.” for the heads up.]
Related articles:
How beleaguered RIM’s half-CEOs lost an empire – February 21, 2012
Beleaguered RIM positions itself as takeover bait – January 6, 2012
Beleaguered RIM’s long, slow death spiral – December 20, 2011
Following the puck through the ice.
Ouch!
Although BB is a Canadian company, Canadians are a lot more savvy than that. We use more Apple products per capita than even the US.
Actually, RIM is a Canadian company. Blackberry is so last century.
Having worked in Canada over long lengths of time I’d say yes the Canadians are huge Apple enthusiasts by and large. A great bunch to work with too btw.
Amateur hour is over.
A friend is so frustrated by her BB Torch (<1 year old) she bought my old iPhone 3GS (approaching 3 years old). She's getting used to it now, responsiveness is unfortunately is a bit laggy under the latest iOS.
This is just the nail in the coffin. The first signs of weakness was when RIM lost share in the US. Though it’s not technically RIM’s home market, it was RIM’s biggest and most important market and just a stone’s throw away. Once RIM started to chase share in developing markets as a way to paper over the losses in the US and other developed markets, there was a clear problem.
The hubris (“No computer company is going to just walk in and take over mobile phones after all the years we’ve spent figuring it out…” and then Apple & Android doing exactly that) and lack of concern to take action immediately over the Apple competition sealed both RIM’s and Microsofts mobile doom. I love too the fact Ballmer T. Clown is incapable of true innovation in the Jobsian tradition, but when it stares him straight in the face he nervously laughs, ignores it and says “no way this is gonna catch on, with no keyboard, $500 with no subsidy!? We’ve got our craptastic Windows Mobile, which is about the speed of our kind of stagnant boring consumer unnovation, and we really like our head-in-the-sand stragedy, we like it a whole lot.”. BOOM!!!
RIM’s game was up when they denounced Apple engineers and designers as amateurs.
If there was a nobel prize for alternate universe thinking, blackberry would surely be first in line.
LOL – Apple killed the dinosaurs.