RIM sells its 50 millionth BlackBerry, surprises even itself with earnings
By Donald Melanson 
posted Apr 3rd 2009 1:38PM
posted Apr 3rd 2009 1:38PM
Other devices may have made it to the mark a bit quicker but, any way you shake it, selling 50 million of any consumer electronics device is pretty darn impressive, especially when the device in question is often laden with contracts and hefty monthly bills. What's more, in addition to announcing that milestone, RIM also confirmed that it's current user base now totals a whopping 25 million, 3.9 million of which were added in the last quarter alone. Those new users also look to have helped push RIM past even its own best earnings forecasts, with the company reporting fourth quarter revenue of $3.46 billion, or about a 24.5% jump from $2.78 billion of the previous quarter -- which should be almost enough to make RIM's top execs forget about all those pesky problems they've been facing over the past year.
[Via TG Daily]
[Via TG Daily]
50 millionth!!!!
Oh, you.
no, you sir are first.
What does it mean when only half of the people who bought your product still use it? Isn't that bad or am I missing something here.
You are missing something...
All that means is people liked their first device so much they bought a second... I am on my third.
Many BB users have gone from their first BB to their 3 or 5th one by now. I know many people that used to have the 'original' pager-style BB that have since upgraded
I'm not a blackberry user (yet), but if they are like my uncle they update annually (usually at company expense).
The other section of my department has blackberries, turns out programmers don't need them... aww.
I used to have that BB.
what model number is it?
I loved that BB. That's the 850.
http://na.blackberry.com/eng/devices/archived/850950.jsp
thats the 1.0
I think the original probably had the best keyboard. And I think the clickable scroll wheel was better than the trackball. I think Danger's Hiptop/Sidekick also went backwards in terms of usability and feel with their keyboards and wheel-to-trackball change.
@ Scott R:
I agree about the KB. I didn't like that the ridges on the scroll wheel seemed kinda sharp. The other thing I didn't like about this model was the sucky cheap, plastic holster. I don't know how many of those I broke without even trying.
I call BS on the 25 million users. I have a pile of 8000's and curves collecting dust due to people upgrading to bolds, or wifi/gps equipped models. You barely ever see anyone using anything older than an 8000 series.
I was just about to bring that up...there's no way that half of the devices ever sold are still in use.
You really don't think that there are 25 million people using Blackberries? I see people with them all the time. I'm surprised there aren't more using them at this moment.
I can believe it. I see a LOT more BBs in the wild now than even a year ago, especially Pearls. If a significant minority of people in the 25 million bought their first BB in the past year or so, most of them are going to be on their first device, not 3rd, 4th or 9th.
What other industry would have as good analytics to determine usage rates? Not only can they measure the contracts, but they can also measure the throughput through their own servers.
On another note, congrats from a UW grad, keep it up guys
You're calling BS on a very probable and easily substantiated statement? Let's pick and choose where to be cynical next time.
I think what it may be important to more closely read his statement. Being myself, and not metfoo, I can only conjecture, but this is what I can glean:
His disbelief is more oriented towards the fraction of units sold that are in use, not the number sold or the number used on their own.
This is to say that the number of 25 million in use seems reasonable, and seperately a number of 50 million sold seems within reason... But considering the massive number of people who upgrade regularly you would think that the ratio would be more skewed, either something like 15 million in use with 50 million sold, or alternatively something like 70 million sold with 25 million in use.
I personally agree with this observation, but also think that there is minimal reason for RIM to lie about this issue. I think what could be likely is that due to the markets rapid growth over the last year, there are a number of new first time users. This would shift the fraction in the direction that it seems to sit. This makes more sense when considering the general exponential growth of their user base, the people who have had 5 BBs are perhaps more in the minority, even though the general process is regular replacements at the company's expense....
But I am no expert so I digress.... I am happy to hear though, my brother codes for RIM, and has been making a nice living for himself and he has only been out of uWaterloo for a couple years.
The 25 Million users refers to the number of individual accounts that their servers provide pins and other services for. BIS and BES not how many devices... Some other devices can access RIM user base through blackberry connect. Win mobile and S60 have BB connect clients available.
Hopefully it will of taken some sting off the Storm.
Around here the official organization phone is an 8700c. We have lots of 'em. My own personal one is an 8800, but I used to have an 8700c.
In the last year it's basically broken down to people who have a Berry, people who have an iPhone, and people who have some LG that's trying to pretend to be either a Berry or an iPhone. Oh, and broke-ass people who have some old Motorola something-or-other but WANT a Berry or an iPhone.
or people who dont give a dam and just want to make a phone call or send a text
Low ranked for arrogance.
This has been probably helped in the UK by the BlackBerry Pearl is on pay-as-you-go on Orange.
Is the Storm usable yet?
For a while, just needed that firmware update. lol. But, the storm was mostly built to satisfy blackberry users that wanted a device like an iPhone.
(CrackBerry User: "Did you send that email, no [...looks at phone for 2 seconds...] I mean yes").
I have a Storm on 4.7.113 and I love it. Huge improvement from the release 4.7.65. There are things that could be better about it, but I believe it is the best touch phone on the market. It's biggest competitor in my opinion is the Bold. As my first Blackberry, I was torn between the Bold and Storm and got the Storm for the bigger screen. I love it.
The Storm is great. I am still on .75 and it has been said that Verizon will be releasing .113 very soon. I too wanted a bigger screen. It's not perfect and does suffer from occasional slow downs and choppiness when typing fast or transitioning from applications to the home screen. The camera is slow, but everyone says the leaked .113 fixes that problem completely. Application memory was an issue for me when I got my phone but I deleted all the programs I don't use (like foreign language support, help app, that brick breaker game, etc) and that helped free up a lot. I've read that .113 seems to handle memory better as well. All in all, I think it's a great phone. I am just waiting for that "official" Verizon update.
Test
CONGRATU-FREAKIN-LATIONS..... it worked. -__-"
The iphone is the new RAZR.
It is not really a smart phone though it is smarter than the RAZR.
It will get there, it has potential.
And dude, you are a bit over the top with your fanboyness. Get over it we are glad that you like your apple products. Just stop crapping on every thread. Keep an open mind, and get an education and one day you may be worth listening to.
Loyalty to a consumer product manufacturer is a one sided relationship and a waste of time.
Holy Crap! A post by Shugg that's actually readable.
So it took bb how many years to sell 50.,12-13.
iPhone been out for 20 months n sold 20 mill smartphones , I don't see any celebrations being held for that. They are just giving people what they want in a phone, fir apple it's not about quantity . It's about customer satisfaction.,
*snore*
iPhone is not a smartphone, also two very different markets
You're assuming that there has been equal demand for this type of product over the last 12-13 years. I think a better comparison would be how many BBs vs. iPhones sold over the last 20 months. The BB may have been around for ages, but for most of its life, it's been a niche product limited by cost and existing infrastructure. It's only in the last few years that wireless data use has really taken off. Apple got into the market because they wisely knew it was going to get big, while RIM has been there since day one with the knowledge that it would get big one day.
In your logic you could state the reverse, RIM sold 3,9 million in 1 quarter so they only need 5 quarters to reach up to 20 million while Apple required 2,5 years now who is slow? I always get stumbled by the stupidity of people's fawlty logic by misinterpreting statistics without thinking 5 seconds further. Not to mention to actually consider comparing the iPhone to a BB. 2 totally different markets which barely lapse over eachother and any BB user who tried the iPhone quickly picked up his BB again.
You don't see any celebrations for the iPhone? Are you f-ing kidding me? Every time there is some Apple conference they brag about the numbers with a big pie-chart of the Apple numbers vs. other phones. Apple gushes about how much software they have sold through the AppStore. Bragging is done how the iPhone grew faster last year vs. WinMo or BB (when you go from 0 sold to X number sold, of course you have huge growth percentages). This site alone has a daily iPhone circle-jerk. The Apple fanboys come out of the woodwork everytime an Apple competitor is mentioned to slam the competition and beat their chest as they announce how well the iPod or iPhone sells against those competition (read the comments about any Zune article). But you don't see celebrations? Are you really that blind, or is the RDF just obscuring your view?
>fir apple it's not about quantity . It's about customer satisfaction.,
The RDF'd Apple's fan belief that the company is in business only to make them happy and money all that other jazz just isn't important. Um yeah. One of the first things apple said about the iphone is how many they would sell but whatever. What is strange is that Apple's market share fell last quarter and RIM's rose...
From IDC -
Apple had 30.1% of the U.S. smartphone market during the third quarter of 2008, but that dropped to 22.3% in the fourth quarter.
By contrast, RIM's share of this market was 40.4% in the third quarter of last year, and this rose to 47.5% by the end of the year.
So, are you saying that BB customers are more satisifed? I don't know about that but I'd say that given all years BB's have been out and all the models they've sold the fact that their market share is rising is impressive.
"iPhone is not a smart phone." Yeah, and bears do not $hit in the woods, moron.
@Dax; I'd say it is really a media device with smartphone features.
In fact, I was an iPhone user, sttod in line for both releases. I recently went to a Bold and wouldn't go back. I rather communicate with my communication device.
There are serious issues when in order to communicate you must remain active in a single application, oh and when you want to communicate via another channel, you have to switch to that app. Yeah, I'm talking about the iPhone, and yes I know you can get email and calls while in another app. With my Bold I can be signed into Facebook, MySpace, Yahoo IM, MSN, Google Talk, IRC, BBM, etc and still get calls and email all at the same time.
Multitasking, you may have heard of it, it's been around for a while now...
>> "iPhone been out for 20 months n sold 20 mill smartphones , I don't see any celebrations being held for that."
Yes you do. Every time there is ANY Apple article... there is always mention of the iPhone... and how well it sells!
“Oh, people can come up with statistics to prove anything. 14% of people know that.”
That is one beautiful piece of hardware.
I have the Storm and it is without a doubt the biggest POS I have ever owned . Not just the worst phone, the worst piece of electronics I have EVER owned . I'm constantly needing to reboot it, it never types the letter you press, the browser sucks, and it's fat and heavy. It is the least elegant, least intuitive phone you can buy today. And, now that they opened the App Store, have fun paying a minimum of $2.99 for their POS apps.
What's most amazing is that they had the perfect example to emulate (rip off) in the form of the iPhone, and they still fucked it up.
Read and update. http://forums.crackberry.com/f86/9500-official-release-os-4-0-0-144-a4-7-0-113-multilanguage-180560/
I guess you need to learn how to press the Menu key and scroll down to Close Application when you're done using the app. But I guess you knew that, right?
Your computer wouldn't run too good if you never closed the window when you were done and did that for everything you used on your computer. Do me a favor, go into your My Documents, press Ctrl + A and hit enter. You'd have to reboot your computer everytime you did that too.
As far as the keyboard not working, maybe your not pressing hard enough or you are pressing too hard, or maybe you just suffer from Fat Finger Syndrome.
Let me guess, you got rid of your Storm and bought an iPhone? Oh that's right, you can't use that on Verizon either, well, there is always one of those LG pieces of shit touchscreen phones that try oh so hard to be the iPhone or any successful touchscreen smartphone.
I had a Blackberry Pearl and it was one of the greatest phones i owned. If it weren't for the small screen and lack of touch screen as compared to my new G1, i'd still be using my BB.
I'm sure any of the crappy "Cool Cheap Cell Phones" that this guy sells is better than than Blackberry Storm !