According to a recent report by Strategy Analytics, Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) has overtaken RIM by a good 3.1 million when it comes to handset shipments in the third quarter of 2010. Apple’s hugely popular iPhone has hit a whopping 15.4 million shipments, whereas RIM’s fighting BlackBerry has hit 12.3 million.
This is the first time Apple (AAPL) have ever outdone the BlackBerry on a quarterly basis, and it only adds insult to injury for RIM following Steve Jobs’ recent boast during last week’s conference call when he announced that his company was on top.
We’ve now passed RIM. And I don’t see them catching up with us in the foreseeable future. They must move beyond their area of strength and comfort, into the unfamiliar territory of trying to become a software platform company. I think it’s going to be a challenge for them to create a competitive platform and to convince developers to create apps for yet a third software platform after iOS and Android. With 300,000 apps on Apple’s App Store, RIM has a high mountain ahead of them to climb
The top spot when it comes to shipments was stolen by Nokia, however, who shipped an outstanding 26.5 million smartphones in the quarter.
Despite this news, RIM are still very much a contender in the smartphone market, and with their new Bold 9780 and Style 9670 devices coming soon, they may soon receive a much needed boost in popularity.
[via Boy Genius Report]Advertisement
2 Comments on “Apple (AAPL) Beats BlackBerry Shipments for Q3 with iPhone: 15.4m vs. 12.3m”
Apple’s recent earnings were for Q4, not Q3. Their fiscal year is offset by one quarter from the calendar year; thus the upcoming holiday season will be Q1 for Apple.
Next time, Killian, you might want to include this info as a footnote. Or you could just say “last quarter”. Thanks.
Apple gets help from third-party companies working on their competitive platform or not, like ifunia is working on MS’s platform, so the companies like ifunia can produce apps for apple and RIM, the first one can’t make choose so agility. So, jobs is right that Blackberry has a high mountain ahead of them to climb.