General

More bad news for RIM

Canada’s Research In Motion was dealt another blow yesterday as technology research firm Gartner Inc. said BlackBerry sales around the world were down 10.7 per cent from December 2010 to December 2011. BlackBerry sales represented 14.6 per cent of all global smartphone sales by operating system in 2010; that figure had plummeted to 8.8 per cent by the end of 2011.

Adding insult to injury, the decline in sales happens just as the appetite for smartphones is ballooning. According to the same report, 472 million smartphones were sold worldwide in 2011, a 58 per cent increase compared to 2010. Smartphones now account for 31 per cent of all mobile phones sold in the world.

Smartphones operating on Google’s Android system and Apple devices remain the two top-sellers.

An article in today’s Financial Post predicts RIM will continue to struggle through much of 2012, at least until it releases its new BlackBerry 10 platform—which has been delayed until later this year.

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