A point that’s puzzled me a bit since I started writing for The iPhone 5 News Blog is that while Android-based handsets get frequent mention as a potential alternative choice to an iPhone, the original smartphone — Research In Motion’s BlackBerry — is rarely ever mentioned at all.
RIM is a Canadian company based in Waterloo, Ontario, and also a major employer in my home province of Nova Scotia, so I’m predisposed to monitor BlackBerry’s fortunes for parochial and patriotic reasons, although I’m not a particular admirer of RIM or its management, and personally favor the iOS. However, I’m intrigued by the BlackBerry’s evident “invisibility” on The iPhone 5 News Blog’s reader forums. Does anyone in the audience see BlackBerry as a conceivable iPhone substitute? After all, as recently as last fall it was the bestselling smartphone OS, and while it’s now fallen to third place behind Android and the iOS, it still commands 24.7 percent of the U.S. smartphone market according to recent ComScore market research metrics, which isn’t exactly chopped-liver, and means millions of BlackBerries are still being sold. Incidentally, RIM just launched five new BlackBerry models last week, while iPhone aficionados still waith for a new model announcement.
There are also evident regional preferences in smartphone OS popularity. New survey data from targeted mobile advertising Jumptap shows that consumers in the U.S. South and Southwest tend to be Android-biased compared to the rest of the country, while those in the Midwest and Northeast lean towards Apple’s iOS. California, Texas and Florida over-index for Android use and states in New England and the Midwest over-index for iOS use. Blackberry preferenced is over indexed in New York, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, the District of Columbia, South Carolina, Kansas, and Oregon — all but the latter two having large user communities in the finance and/or government sectors where the BlackBerry reigns supreme.
The Jumptap data also reveals some interesting patterns for advertisers to consider when targeting consumers using Android devices vs. iOS devices, finding that Sony Ericsson devices are the only Android based products with ad performance nearing that of iOS devices, averaging a .54% click-through rate,compared to the industry average of .52%, but still well back of iOS devices at .78%. And speaking of smartphone OS preference disparity, it’s not only regional, but can vary with user age as well. Another new smartphone survey, this one out of the U.K. by New Ofcom research, notes that among Britons, a quarter of adults (27 per cent) and almost half of teenagers (47 per cent) now own a smartphone, according to Ofcom’s latest Communications Market Report, with iPhone is the most popular brand overall, but BlackBerries, with 24 percent of the overall U.K. smartphone market, are still the most popular choice among younger consumers, beating the iPhone 37 percent to 17 percent for brand choice, the report noting that “Female teens, in particular, appear to have a preference for BlackBerry handsets (44 percent),” adding that “anecdotal evidence suggests that this preference is driven by the BlackBerry messenger service (BBM) which offers a free alternative to texting (SMS).” Younger adults and teens send and receive significantly higher numbers of SMS texts than older people, and teens send more texts than make calls, and teen girls are more addicted to their phones than boys.
Meanwhile, the iPhone’s biggest British fans are adult users, making it the most popular brand of smartphone overall, with a 32% share among British adults.
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