Back in 2012, BlackBerry’s then CEO, Thorsten Heins, expressed his belief and confidence that BlackBerry could overtake Windows Phone and become the third most used smartphone operating system, behind both Android and iOS. Unfortunately the latest numbers released by comScore are suggesting otherwise. In fact it seems that in terms of market share in the US, Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform has managed to edge out BlackBerry to claim the number two spot, although not by much.
According to the latest data from Comscore, Windows Phones are now used by more subscribers than Blackberry handsets in USA. 3.2% of 159.8 million US smartphone owners use Windows Phones, or 5.11 million people, vs 4.95 million Blackberry owners. This is up around 330,000 people from 3 months ago, indicating the effect of the Christmas season on sales, likely due to great Nokia Lumia 520/521 sales. Blackberry is down another 0.5%, after losing 0.7% 3 months earlier, which is unsurprising when the operating system only holds 0.5% of the US smartphone sales. A recent promotion by T-Mobile saw 94% of Blackberry users taking part upgrading to handsets running other operating systems, despite a $50 incentive to stay Blackberry by T-Mobile.