January 29, 2013 | Paul Merak | Comments 0

BB10 vs WP8 for the 3rd spot in world’s smartphone market share

RIM is launching a much awaited Blackberry 10 OS and its two new flagship phones Blackberry Z10 and X10 tomorrow.

World’s smartphone market share is dominated by android with around 72 percent market share followed by iOS and its declining 20 percent market share. Together iOS and android take up 92 percent of smartphone market. The third spot way behind the market leaders is undecided. Both RIM and Microsoft will work hard at surpassing one another in time to come to secure the bronze.

Gartner and IDC, the two most credible smartphone market analysts see odds working for Microsoft and not so much for Research in Motion. As you can see from this prediction table by Gartner, Windows Phone should find its barrings and gain substantial portion of the market share while Blackberry 10 is to further decline to meager 4.1 percent of global share.

Global phone market share by OEM belongs to Samsung with about 23 percent, followed by Nokia with 19 percent. RIM controls about 2 percent of current mobile phone market. The fall is fairly quick for RIM as a year ago their market share was above 5 percent. RIM’s hope for rebuilding the once shining star is to successfully launch their 6 new devices this year, to motivate developers to fill the App World Store with good apps and to generally offer what isn’t already available via android and iOS.

Microsoft’s Windows Phone 8 has a bit of a lead to Blackberry 10, but the lead is not significant. Windows Phone 8 adoption rates are fairly slow. It did not gain much market share in the time it’s been available. The first Nokia profits shown were in the last quarter of 2012. The quality of apps could be a reason, the premium costs another, but I think most businesses wait to see what RIM will show tomorrow at the official Blackberry 10 launch.

RIM’s future clearly hangs in the acceptance and success of its new Blackberry 10 OS. RIM has a solid loyal clientele, but the success of the company will surely depend on gaining the hearts and minds of new clients. So what is BB10 offering that android already isn’t? Blackberry 10 offers a world class multitasking as well as a browser. Blackberry 10 has a unique gesture controlled user interface and a very attractive messaging called BlackBerry Hub, where all twitter, facebook, email and text messages are bundled as new notifications. BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) revolution may act in RIM’s favor especially to secure larger portion of workplace market.

Time will tell of course but as it stands the playing field is fairly leveled and the success of one over the other will depend at least in part on quality and quantity of apps. Thus far App World store has about 100,000 apps, but the loyal client base of Blackberry amounts to more than 80 million. New developer tools like new simulator have been added and C++ Visual Studio plugin improved. A $10,000 reward has been promised to any developer selling at least $1000 in sales of their app, so making apps for Blackberry 10 OS can potentially be more lucrative for most developers.

The time for RIM to act is now. Starting February 25th the world will be focused on Mobile World Center and all its new devices. Shipping date has to be close to launch, otherwise interest may dwindle. All major providers have to sell BB10 with no delays and with no exclusivity. Executives from these carriers should be present at launch.

Blackberry 10 got FIPS certified as the safest OS for encrypted communications suitable for businesses and government agencies. With BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10 already in place and well received and over 150 large companies testing Blackberry 10, RIM has a solid shot at securing a meaningful market share to strongly compete with Windows Phone.

BB10 vs WP8 for the 3rd spot in world’s smartphone market share

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