Stop me if you’ve heard this before. This week IDC Mobile Devices and Technology Trends released their list of top-selling smartphones in the U.S. And, for what seems like 20 quarters in a row, the BlackBerry Curve came out on top. This time around, though, a few more questions surround the rankings, including one, posed by Kevin at CrackBerry, that I hadn’t thought of before. My main question pertains to the classification. We know that Curve includes the 83xx series, but what about the 85xx? Was that included in the survey? Or were people taking advantage of discounted older generation Curves?
Furthermore, if the 83xx and 85xx were in fact combined, then why does IDC separate the iPhone 3G and the iPhone 3GS? Perhaps if they combined those two the iPhone would top the charts. So it’s not as cut and dry that the Curve was tops, depending on the methodology. The iPhones ranked Nos. 2 and 4, making a Droid sandwich. The Pearl, Bold, and Storm ranked Nos. 5, 6, and 7 (did they count the Storm and Storm 2 as one?), and the Tour finished at No. 9. Not a bad showing for BlackBerry at all.
Tip of the week: Exercise caution when changing application permissions. You might notice that when you install and run some third party applications, they ask you to change your permissions, or else the app won’t work. Most of the time this is nothing to worry about, but as we learned last week it can lead to spyware attacks. This isn’t to say you should never change your permissions, but rather that you should only change them for trusted applications.
RIM makes more than $4 per month per subscriber
While RIM does make a profit on each handset sold — at least in most instances — they also have a revenue stream derived from monthly usage. How much, exactly? According to a Trefis estimate, the company brings in an estimated $3.65 per month per BIS user, and $6.86 per month per BES user. RIM is seeing more and more users on the consumer side, but as long as it doesn’t come at the cost of business users, they’ll stay ahead. At over 36 million users worldwide, that’s close to $150 million per month.
BlackBerry Atlas to ship with OS 5.0.1.205, include widgets?
We hear so much about new BlackBerry models that it’s tough to keep everything straight. For instance, when I saw the BBLeaks post about the BlackBerry 8910 running OS 5.0.1.205, I didn’t put two and two together. Thankfully, they did. In their Storm 3 rumor post they noted a similar OS build. This one includes widgets, or at least that’s the idea. We’ll see what OS the model eventually ships with, but given all the information we’ve heard over the past few weeks I don’t think it will be too far away.
Random notes
We’ll close out this week’s News From The Wire with a few random notes of interest to BlackBerry fans.
- Want to annoy the crap out of people? Then download this cowbell application. It’s meant for the Olympics, but you can use it to bother anyone at any time. Tampa Bay Rays fans will be happy to hear about this.
- Check out this week’s group of premium BlackBerry themes.
- I don’t know why you’d be reading this if you’re not a BlackBerry user, but on the off-chance that you’re a Windows Mobile user with BlackBerry envy, you can check out the BlackBerry Application Suite. It turns your WinMo phone into a BlackBerry, which will be attractive to some. Apparently it works with WM 6.5.1, though it appears you need to be running on BES for it to work.
- Where to buy digital music on your BlackBerry. There aren’t many outlets, but here’s a list of a few.
- GymTechnik updated to support OS 5.0. You know, if you’re still holding true to your New Year’s resolution at this point.
This post originated at BBGeeks.com – home to all things Blackberry! Also a great source of info about AT&T BlackBerry.
BlackBerry News From The Wire for the Week of 2/8/2010
This post originated at BBGeeks.com – home to all things Blackberry! Also a great source of info about AT&T BlackBerry.
BlackBerry News From The Wire for the Week of 2/8/2010