For RIM, it's swings and roundabouts: after our analysis showing that RIM lost 1m BlackBerry users in the US in the past three months, the company has announced that it has gained 1m users in Europe in just the past three weeks.
Which led to the follwing:
Patrick Spence, Managing Director, EMEA, Research In Motion, said: "Thank you to the over one million new customers who have joined the BlackBerry community across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa in the last three weeks alone. We're excited by the continued momentum we're experiencing across EMEA, and are appreciative of the amazing efforts of our application developer partners, our operator partners, our retail partners, and our distributor partners who have helped us make this happen."
(Distributor partners = carriers, mostly.)
"BlackBerry continues to be the number one smartphone brand in a number of our markets, including the Netherlands, South Africa and the UK - where we also remain the number one smartphone vendor by total unit sales, and the number one prepay smartphone vendor. Our smartphones including the BlackBerry Bold and BlackBerry Curve also top the sales lists in countries like the UAE and Saudi Arabia and we recently announced RIM's international revenue for the first quarter had grown 67% year on year."
That's true. We don't know anything about how international profits went, though; worldwide, profits were down 9.6% in the most recent quarter.
What's also not clear is how the prices on those phones are going. The average selling price for RIM phones, according to its results, dipped below $300 in the past quarter; it's still getting squeezed. But clearly, it's pricing to expand users, and that is definitely succeeding. There's a special attraction in the Middle East, where BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) lets people of the opposite sex communicate without having to do it face-to-face: BBM and BlackBerries are hugely popular in those countries for that reason apart from plenty of others. That's part of why Apple is introducing its own version in iOS5.
Meanwhile, some interesting news from Nokia. You'll recall that it showed off the N9, which is going to be its only MeeGo phone.
So, where will you be able to get an N9? Horace Dediu of Asymco, who notes:
Countries where the Nokia N9 will not be launched: UK, Italy, Spain, France, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Belgium, Canada and the US.
And:
The first Nokia WP7 [Windows Phone] device will be launched in UK, Italy, Spain, France, Germany, and the Netherlands, all excluded from the Nokia N9 launch.
Which initially implies that the US, Norway and Belgium won't be getting either device to begin with.
The fact of the overlap (or non-overlap) carries an interesting question: will the first Nokia Windows Phone actually use the N9's body? It's a good-looking phone - and with the slightly refreshed Nokia under Stephen Elop, perhaps a spirit of economy will prevail.
No comments:
Post a Comment