Report: BlackBerry Claims Nearly 50 Percent Of U.S. Smartphone Market; Storm 2 On The Way

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Report: BlackBerry Claims Nearly 50 Percent Of U.S. Smartphone Market; Storm 2 On The Way

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Research In Motion’s BlackBerry Curve was the most popular smartphone in the U.S. during the first quarter, beating out Apple’s iPhone, according to The NPD Group. Not only did the Curve perform well, but two other BlackBerry products made the top five, granting the company a nearly 50 percent market share in the U.S. The other surprise was the T-Mobile G1, which came in at fifth place. Release.

Apple’s dethroning was somewhat expected. As we pointed out last month, iPhone sales for the past two quarters have not been able to touch the volumes experienced by RIM (NSDQ: RIMM) on a worldwide basis. In Apple’s second quarter, it sold 3.79 million iPhones globally, or less than half of RIM’s 7.8 million sales in the most comparable quarter.

NPD Group said RIM benefited because its products are widely available from the four major U.S. carriers, unlike the iPhone which is tied up in an exclusive with AT&T (NYSE: T). Verizon Wireless (NYSE: VZ) also helped by offering aggressive “buy-one-get-one” BlackBerry deals and heavily promoting the Storm, RIM’s first touchscreen device. Overall, the Storm was the third best-selling device. Separately, Reuters reported that RIM’s co-CEO Jim Balsillie told analysts and investors today during a presentation that the Storm has been a hit and that a second-generation device is currently in the works. “That product was a huge success in terms of sales and adoption,” he said.

Here’s the top five handsets from Q1:

1. RIM BlackBerry Curve (all 83XX models)
2. Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) iPhone 3G (all models)
3. RIM BlackBerry Storm
4. RIM BlackBerry Pearl (all models, except flip)
5. T-Mobile G1

Photo Credit: Flickr

By Tricia Duryee