Android Hurting Blackberry More Than iPhone

The Business Insider has put together a great chart showing the affect Android's growth on the iPhone and Blackberry. Android runs on many hardware platforms, so its sometimes tough to figure out just exactly what's going on with share and who is gaining and who is losing. This new chart makes it clear that RIM's Blackberry platform is getting hurt the most. The chart is most useful when considering Verizon as the focal point. They did not include Blackberry trends with other carriers beside Verizon, but did include other trends for Android with all carriers.


First, we see that the Android climb at Verizon, at least over the last quarter, is in direct opposition to the Blackberry decline with the same carrier. During the same period, the iPhone growth with AT&T appears to have been unaffected. RIM and Verizon have been strong partners for many years, but it appears pretty certain that RIM will quickly be dropping into the third spot for PDAPhones / smartphones pretty soon. RIM is now only 45% of Verizon's PDAPhone share, down from 69% a year ago. In a few weeks when the iPhone comes to town, they are going to drop even further.

RIM spent all their marketing at the most recent CES show on their new tablet, that they are positioning as a business alternative to the iPad. It will likely be popular with corporations that are committed to Blackberry already, but it is doubtful that it will put a dent in the iPad's significant advantage with tablets. RIM needs to do something soon to turn around their declining share.

It is also interesting in this chart to see how insignificant AT&T's Android footprint is compared to the iPhone. I've heard stories about AT&T sales people in their stores saying that the majority of folks coming in there for new service are coming in for an iPhone, but this chart helps capture some of that. With Verizon picking up the iPhone now, they need to work to get their position strengthened around Android as well. Verizon may end up being better off that they didn't start with the iPhone given that they've already climbed to the lead for Android by a good margin, and they won't really need to do much to drive significant iPhone sales as well. At the end of the day, they could easily have a 3 way split between Blackberry, Android, and iPhone by the end of the year. My prediction is that we'll see something with Verizon around the end of 2011 a share distribution of around 35% Android, 30% iPhone, 30% Blackberry, and 5% Windows Phone... with any additional gains on the iPhone coming at the expense of the Blackberry.

The main advantage that RIM still has is security for enterprise computing. Apple and Google seem to be dancing around that but neither really tackling it and setting it as a priority. In my employer, this is one of the reasons that the deployment of assets to fully support the iPhone as a supported platform alongside Blackberry continue to lag.