Blackberry users ready to abandon ship for the iPhone, Nexus One
If a recent survey from market research firm Crowd Science is anything to go by, there's dark times ahead for RIM, maker of the Blackberry smartphone. 40% of survey respondents said they plan to ditch their Blackberry handset for an iPhone when it's time to upgrade. As if that wasn't bad enough, another 32% of those surveyed said they'd be getting a Nexus One for their next smartphone instead of another Blackberry. The survey doesn't appear to have asked about other companies' smartphones, but even if they didn't, the story told by these numbers is bad enough as is: at best, only 28% of current Blackberry users plan on sticking with the platform.
The Crowd Science survey also gives some insight into why Blackberry users are ready to flock to other platforms. The Blackberry is usually seen as a stereotypically "business" phone and not one that the average user picks up for strictly personal use, and the survey's numbers support that notion. Only 16% of Blackberry users said they used the handset for personal use only, compared to 28% of iPhone users and 32% of Android users.
Another possible reason the iPhone and Android platforms are drawing Blackberry users away? Apps. Compared to iPhone and Android users, Blackberry owners are far less likely to download apps -- 67% of Blackberry owners hadn't downloaded any free apps in the 7 days before the survey, and 91% hadn't bought any apps, either. Meanwhile, nearly 2/3 of iPhone users had downloaded at least one free app during the same time, as had more than 2/3 of Android users; additionally, over 1/3 of iPhone users surveyed had downloaded a paid app during the week prior to the survey.
What's bad news for RIM is good news for both Apple and Google. And according to the same Crowd Science survey, the battle lines are already firmly drawn between those two platforms, too -- 90% of iPhone users plan on sticking with the iPhone for their next upgrade, while 90% of Android users plan on staying with Google's smartphone platform.
[Via Ars Technica]
