Though RIM has been battered with bad news in recent months, packing a BlackBerry is still big in Britain according to new figures from research firm Kantar Worldpanel ComTech. Android is out in the lead with 45.2% of the UK market, BlackBerry increased its share in June to jump to 22.3%, keeping the iPhone in third place with 18.3%.
The report says it’s women and teenagers keeping BlackBerry in the battle with most of its new customers coming from folk flinging away their old feature phones and switching to smartphones. Read on to discover why Britain is still backing BlackBerry…
The figures show that 85% of new BlackBerry sales come from customers who’ve never owned a smartphone before and suggests that texting and BBM are the big selling points. Most of the upgraders are women who tend to text more than men while teenagers are still being attracted to the low price of BlackBerry devices and the privacy of BBM.
But while Britain is a hotspot for RIM, its market share is tanking in the US, Germany, France, Italy and Australia. The Kantar Worldpanel Comtech report reveals that 35.6% of BlackBerry owners in the UK are between 16 and 24 with 70% of them having used BBM in the last four weeks.
It seems the future of BlackBerry in Britain rests on BBM remaining popular. Perhaps the idea o creating a BBM app for other smartphones isn’t as crazy as it once sounded.
If you’ve got a BlackBerry in your pocket, hit the comments and let us know what made you choose it? Was BBM the standout feature?
