“RIM represented over 90 percent of Verizon’s smartphone sales as recently as October 2009 but crashed almost immediately after the Motorola Droid arrived at Verizon a month later,” Electronista reports. “It has since fallen over the past year from 55 percent to less than 20 percent as of November 2010. The 80 percent remaining is now almost exclusively attributed to Android, Goodman wrote.”
Electronista reports, “AllThingsD noted that the BlackBerry’s greatly reduced presence at Verizon corroborated rumors of a shift in attention to iPhone plans. With BlackBerry 6 upgrades and devices unlikely to produce a major effect, Verizon is more likely to be courting Apple to accelerate sluggish growth. It now depends primarily on Android, but the platform hasn’t been enough to overcome an AT&T that has nearly caught up in subscriber numbers due almost entirely to iPhone sales.”
Read more in the full article here.
Verizon. Getting the iPhone any day now since 2007…
It will be interesting to see 2011 come and go without a Verizon iPhone. After all, the 5-year AT&T agreement doesn’t expire until the end of next year…
As for RIM, it would be nice to see them stay relevant, because the competition between wannabes is always more fun to watch if there are several participants (RIM, WinPhone7, Android, Web OS, Symbian…).
Still can’t wait for All Things D to air the complete video of the interview with Mike Lazaridis.. ! lol
I went into an AT&T store with my in-laws as they wanted to buy iPhone 4’s and the sales people were really pushing the Windows phone – It was really annoying – I did play with the Windows phone and what the hell were they thinking? Looks like fisher-price designed that OS – I can’t find anything on that piece of crap – God I love my iPhone..
@Predrag, you beat me to the punch-line!
The sales people at AT&T were pushing Windows phone because iPhone sells by itself. No sales effort is needed to move iPhones, and they often times don’t have them in stock because of that. Meanwhile, when some other device is collecting dust in your warehouse, you work up your best pitch in order to move the damn thing…
iPhone has real competition in android and anyone who doesn’t recognize this needs to wake up and snort an expresso. Hopefully apple will have enough new OS toys up their sleeve to keep the kids interested and to prove they are the best. This game won’t play out like Mac but it also won’t play out like iPod either.
Wha “Still can’t wait for All Things D to air the complete video of the interview with Mike Lazaridis”
I can stand to watch it. Already know enough not to pick up a BB again.
@Yoyo
Android is to iPhone as cat shit is to cat food. One goes in at the right end; the other is expunged as copycat feces at the other end.
Why do you insist on hanging onto the 5 year exclusivity agreement? Do you not understand that business deals can (and usually do) change? It’s very likely the deal was altered so Apple could get out early, much like they did with carriers around the world. Verizon will get the iPhone in the first half of 2011. And you will look foolish for being so close-minded.
@Yoyo
No doubt that Google’s Android OS is the iPhone’s major competitor. It is very popular in my neck of the woods as AT&T’s rural coverage is horrendous. However, Android has a very tumultuous road ahead of it. There is still the lawsuit from Oracle, ya know the one that contends the Android OS is just one big rip-off of Java? Not to mention that Android is as fragmented as most Windows hard drives. But, the fact that bothers me the most when comparing Android activations to iPhone activations, that hardly anybody in the media even gives lip service to.
Android is available to multiple carriers (i.e, all of them) with dozens of different phones while the iPhone is available on 1 carrier with 2 models.
When, not if, the iPhone moves to multiple carriers (and not just Verizon but at least 3 carriers) will be the true test whether Android has staying power. Your average consumer does not need Android’s openness, the freedom to download anything you want may be nice but a lot of consumers do not need it and they realize it. I would much rather use Apple’s curated app store and be pretty certain that what I’m downloading won’t completely ruin my device. If I was a power user with my smartphone I would care about being able to log into root and really use the device, however when I’m not at my desk using my power machines I could give a rat’s ass about being able to do that kind of thing. And most consumers don’t care about doing that kind of thing at all.
Personally, Android will be around and popular in the short term. As technology advances and user privacy and device security become even more critical the “openness” of Android will not necessarily be a good thing. Because, while Android is certainly open in that you can download pretty much whatever you want it is not open in the sense that it is open source. Google routinely closes outside development of Android to work with smartphone manufacturers and each carrier adds their own proprietary touch. This does not make a good user experience.
@ Yoyo,
Android has Windows phone 7 for competition. Android is an operating system, not a cell phone.
IPhone has Blackberry for competition, Nokia almost smartphones for competition and HP/Palm smartphones for competition.
AAPL is keeping it’s word with the 5 year exclusive with AT&T. The only way AAPL would be excused from it’s contract with AT&T would be due in part to AT&T’s growing pains with iPhone an how much iPhone tags it’s network. AT&T is in a good spot right now. They have learned a TON from AAPL when it comes to customer service. Customer service TRUMPS all tech I don’t care how you slice it…. Verizons customer service SUCKS!!!! Verizon is all about bilking the customer with it’s underhanded telcom ways. My 2 cents…. iPhone should go to T-mobile or Sprint before Verizon…. Talk about defection. Have a Grateful Weekend. Cheers!
RIM = Dead Company Walking.
Have to wonder about the backlash towards verizon if they dont get the iPhone and didn’t dispel these rumors.
@Blah blah blah…
Not as bad as the backlash from people bitching about Verizon’s network on the iPhone.. They will be running back to AT&T if they can ever get a Verizon customer service rep on the phone..
This article shows just how reliant the mobile service providers are on basically one product – Blackberry OS, Android OS, or iPhone OS devices. Amazing that one product can change the fortunes for such large, wealthy companies.
As for the Apple-ATT contract, we know it’s already had one major revision: the compensation model completely changed after the first year. Apple originally took a percentage of monthly service fees and the iPhone was $599 and up. Then the model changed to subsidized iPhones and Apple receiving none of the monthly service fees.
We have no idea how many times, if at all, or what terms and conditions were changed in that revision or sometime thereafter. Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile will get the iPhone eventually, but anyone who says they know when is fooling themselves. It will be on Verizon when Steve Jobs says it will. I suspect he’ll say something about it in January, but then again, maybe not.
Apple and AT&T:
people might hate AT&T but think about this:
— apple had to make the exclusive contract because originally nobody else really wanted the iphone. Most carriers had horrendous conditions like their own locked apps etc which Apple refused. Steve Jobs was so frustrated he called their execs ‘orifices’ (see Wired article on development of iPhone). see John Dvorak’s dismissive articles (e.g “Apple should pull the plug on iPhone’ ), Palm’s CEO’s derision for an idea of the attitude of most at the time.
— over the years AT&T engineers have been seen on Apple campus (and probably apple guys have spent a lot of time in AT&T). Building phones is a complex thing and Apple was new at it. Early iPhones had various issues. Small differences and the fit of software hardware can cause problems, phones had to work with complex switching networks and AT&T helped Apple tweak the iPhone and taught apple the in and outs of the phone business. Apple (unlike some e.g the one MDN calls the MOLE) is LOYAL. Apple has become in few short years from NOTHING in the phone business to be the biggest revenue earner in phones in the world : larger than Nokia, Samsung and LG (the next 3) put together and it was with AT&T’s help.
Can you use Lotus Notes email system in iPhone? how?
There’s a free app for Lotus Notes on the iPhone. It’s called IBM Lotus Notes.
The Question I want to ask is, Is a RIM Blackberry phone really a smart phone?
It does email sure, but, everything else is at a feature phone level.
I had a Blackberry before my iPhone and I never thought of it as a smart phone, It was my email phone.
Why are you linking to Electronista, when they clearly cribbed the data and charts from AllthingsD? Seems poor form to me. I can understand Electonista reblogging other sites’ content, but snaking graphics from a report it clearly doesn’t have is kinda weak.
@Credit WhereCreditIsDue
“Why are you linking to Electronista, “
Because they are quoting Electronista. Electronista are the ones that quoted AllThingsD. Read the last paragraph of MDN’s post.
@cs…
I like your style. And I agree.
I think Credit WhereCreditIsDue’s would prefer that MDN link to original sources. Why quote a quoted quote, when you can just as easily quote the source?
Android has been killing Rim, the Verizon iPhone has nothing to do with it..