UPDATED: BlackBerry vs. iPhone
Update: Please note that this replaces an earlier version in which the 2009 Unit Sales figures presented were incorrect.
Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):
Update: Please note that this replaces an earlier version in which the 2009 Unit Sales figures presented were incorrect.
Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):
The more interesting chart would be Blackberry vs Android (or indeed, Android vs iPhone).
Good idea for the next one. We can finish all of them in one go :-)
The infographics that are produced are extremely well done. Are they all done in house?
We published a study last week comparing the usage of apps on BlackBerry and iPhone. We could certainly contribute to a BlackBerry and Android post too.
http://www.localytics.com/blog/post/blackberry-analytics-show-app-usage-higher-during-workday-than-iphone/
Regards,
Brian
Om,
Good chart. Surprised to see iPhone owners tweet more than BBs , which with its keyboard is perfect for tweets. BB might loose to iPhone, Android this year.
Great chart! It says all. Some “experts” would have put it in a 2 pages text. But not Edit Staf. Good job again!
Om, great graphics and perfect way to display the comparision to get a very good snapshot. I was looking at the revenue growth, while iphone’s revenue rate of growth is on a steep upward incline I find BB’s to be somewhat trending to a much flatter growth this year if the ternd is to continued.
Will be interesting to know the breakdown of “what people are saying about them” question to see how it breaks down into business corporate use vs. social use
The unit sales and revenue numbers don’t seem correct. RIM only outsold Apple by 1.48 million units and yet they have double the revenue? I was under the impression that iPhones were much more expensive that RIM’s products?
It appears according to the chart above that Apple had $6.76 billion in revenue from iPhones in 2009 and RIM 14.95 billion in revenue in 2009 from all their phones and yet they only sold 1.48 million more units.
Am I right or am I reading the charts incorrectly?
Om , Great Graphics . All done in-house ? Waiting eagerly for Apple VS Android .
Hardware + App sales = Apple $$ > RIM $$
…by how much, who knows?
BB sales are strong; but the platform will eventually die as it has not evolved and the strong sales of Pearls & Curves ( models with small displays & keyboards) while a good thing in the short term will only hurt the platform in the long term- just look at the app store count 185K apps vs. 5K.
PS: The 150K app count is from like three months ago.
Do you have a source for the 185k iphone app count? Everything I see shows 140k to 150k from the most recent Flurry data released in March (for Feb numbers) http://blog.flurry.com/bid/31376/Flurry-Smartphone-Industry-Pulse-February-2010
Thanks!
Never mind, got it here http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/04/08iphoneos.html
Today I learned that that 55 + 10 + 37 = 102 = 100.
How come RIM pulls in that much revenue and the share price is practically in the toilet compared to what it used to be? RIM is selling more BlackBerrys than ever before.
Because their future is dim. Their OS is archaic, the UI is poor, they haven’t had a new idea in a while, and the public is largely moving to touchscreen phones. They still do well in the business area, but I suspect that won’t be the case for long if they don’t make major changes. Android/iPhone/Microsoft are quickly adding or improving on the business requirements and none of them (not sure on MS) require expensive third-party servers to manage. Also, users at those same companies are increasingly asking for something other than BB, a reversal of past trends.
You forgot one very important thing: RIM had sales promotions (twice in 2009) – Buy one BB, get one free. “Great” way to speed up sales…..
Steven is right. RIM is showing no sign of innovation!
(Though twitter still remains at its relatively early stage here in Japan), the general picture coming from these datas are probably even more reinforced in Japan where BB sold by NTT are having a tough time (and only BOLD available so far). Their image is too business-like and are under the shadow of the “cool” iPhones sold by Softbank. On the other hand, iPhones here have big reception problems, bad audio quality due to the still mediocre Softbank infrastructure.
There’s something wrong with those numbers. I know RIM sold 10M Blackberrys Q3 2009, and Apple sold 7.4M iPhones Q3 2009. Those numbers don’t seem to add up.
Fantastic graphic. Fabulous. It’s like what USA Today did for infographics GigaOm is doing for blog charts- or something.
Blackberry OS is archaic and RIM shows no prospect of bringing it up to par with the iPhone, or even Android anytime soon.
My BlackBerry 8830 World Edition boasts a 64MB app storage stack. I have an 8GB Micro-SD card installed, mind you. So, increase/distribute app storage, and put in a faster processor, and I think you’ll see a lot less BlackBerry attrition due to performance shortfalls.
Did you just say 64 MB (megabytes, really?) and 8 GB as if that was a convincing argument? Sorry to be the one to tell you this, but you’re a bit out of touch with the latest smartphones!
3 years of Apple iPhone overhype and still more Blackberries sold than iPhone, and even with so many more iFart apps available for the iPhone.
I suppose the iFart can only capture so much of the ‘i don’t care if i can actually make a phone call with this monolith’ demographic :)
Nice graphic.
I assume the BB application count is only for their app store… unlike the iPhone, BB apps can be anywhere.
If anyone is interested, there’s another list of iPhone Vs Blackberry differences:
http://blog.glcomputing.com.au/2010/02/why-i-prefer-blackberry-over-iphone-for.html
I agree with many others here. The numbers don’t seem to add up. Apple sold over 20 million iPhones in 2009
http://techcrunchies.com/quarterly-breakup-of-iphone-sales/
Om, great article – like some of the other people here I’d like to see a BB Vs Android Vs iPhone
You’re comparing apples to berries.
an interesting chart will be iphone vs Palm Pre, and Android vs. Palm Pre.
ciao
Blackberry is a mobile phone. Iphone, well it is more like a toy
Blackeberry is a mobile phone. iPhone, well it is more of a mobile computer.
TFTFY.
Well, the PC (in particular the Mac) was called once “more like a toy”… Mocked by people who needed to achieve “serious” tasks (as if reading is not serious enough). Well, it turns out that its dimensions have been reduced by Apple to the size of a phone. It is called: iPhone. Now everybody follows.
If only it could do basic thinks like multi-tasking (or at least task switching)
I agree the iPhone is kinda like a computer in one way… the battery life is so short, it’s best used when connected to a power source
As long as you jailbreak your IPhone, it will kick Blackberry to the back of the bus each time!
Lou
http://www.vpn-privacy.us.tc
What’s up with the “Models”? The 3 models of the iPhone would be the Original, The 3G and the 3GS.
There are many more models of the Blackberry. The Curve 83xx series has different models across carriers as well as the new 85xx Curve. Same with the Bold. You have the older 9000 and the newer 9700.
So what? As per Steve Jobs’ own comment about that critic, “I wasn’t alive at the time, but from everything I’ve heard, Babe Ruth had only one home run, he just kept hitting it over and over again.”
Cool graphic. It looks like you’re assuming Twitter engages RIM and APPL users equally. You should test that assumption carefully before you put too much faith in your metrics.
I’d guess that there is a significance between the ways that BB and iPhone users use Twitter and the Internet in general. Just saying…
I do like that Blackberry has many models to choose from, but are they really all that different?
Great chart! This sure would spice things up:
iPhone to Leapfrog Verizon, Launch at Cricket Wireless (http://wp.me/pMAmz-3g)
Wonder how the comparision will be for 2010 based on the stellar number Apple posted today in their Q1 earnings report. A 12% increase in revenue from analyst estimates in which the iphone played a significant role in this increase. Scary stuff when you factor in global growth for iphone
Another helpful comparison would be total iPhone OS devices vs Blackberry OS devices as that would give a truer indication of the size of each OS platform – a much more useful number for developers and users to gauge the respective size of each platform.
This would include all devices capable of running apps for each respective platform and would include iPod Touch numbers. (the iPad of course would only factor in this year’s sales).
As such we’d be looking at 85 million iPhone OS devices sold in 2.5 years vs 75 million Blackberry devices sold in 9 years. A nice graph plotting this growth would be very nice too – nudge nudge.
In terms of quarterly sales for example, that puts the iPhone OS at approx 14 million iPhone OS devices vs 10 million Blackberry devices sold in their most recent quarters respectively.
It’s funny how analysts always seem to forget about the iPod touch and yet it expands the iPhone OS footprint enormously.
-Mart
I should have mentioned that app downloads would also be a useful indicator, though I don’t think RIM has been brave enough to publish such figures for the Blackberry? 4 billion iPhone app downloads tends to completely overshadow all other competitors.
Mobile web marketshare is a useful indicator of actual device usage and puts the iPhone OS at somewhere between 50-70% of the global mobile web market or 5 times the marketshare of Blackberry (median figure averaging values from Net Applications, StatCounter, StatOwl, W3 Counter, WebMasterPro, Wikimedia, AT Internet Institute).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems#Web_clients
-Mart
People still compare the iPhone to Blackberry???!!! where is the comparison?
The iPhone may be able to do things the Blackberry isn’t capable of doing. That may be a reason why.
I think its clear the iphone is the winner except maybe in the case of older professionals they tend to use the blackberrys more.
And as long as you don’t do a lot of email and you don’t need any of your data to be kept secure and you don’t need to have applications that can integrate with each other.
Very interesting. I was under the impression that were both about as popular but I see that Iphone seems to be the leader here. Nice graphics as well in this article.
I am writing this on my blackberry bold 9700 and have had it for about 4 months now it is great I would recommend one to anyone
omgahhh
I too I’m writing this post on my Blackberry 9000. I have had the iPhone 3g and 3gs. I sold both of them to go back to a Blackberry. Although Blackberries can get slow after awhile before you have to pull the battery out. They are better devices to me, when work needs to be done. iPhones are very fun phones, but is more of an entertainment factor (w/their useless Apps). I love Blackberries b/c you really don’t have to worry about your phone being outdated, b/c they bascially come out w/the same phone.
I’m a Blackberry user but the Android phones are really tempting. If BB was better with it’s internet and camera, I could definitely stay loyal. Apps don’t rule my life.
iPhone has a faster CPU than Blackberry and more memory capacity. In everyday use, though, iPhone’s slightly larger capacity makes no noticeable difference. Both machines instantaneously respond to users’ commands. Competition between batteries also ends in a dead heat. Both machines will run on battery alone for approximately three hours in constant use, and will keep going between ten and twelve hours just idling. When iPhone first hit the market, Blackberry devotees argued iPhone could not stand-up to the dangers and demands of rigorous everyday use. Blackberries admittedly take a beating, because their developers had corporate road warriors in mind as they designed the machines. Over the long haul, though, iPhone has proven amazingly durable, and many of its early detractors have recanted, admitting they mistook iPhones touch-face and sleekness for signs of weakness.
http://www.mixsl.com/2010/12/iphone-vs-blackberry.html
I keep seeing people comment about the sales. Does that really make the phone better? Maybe if you are a phone vendor. I’m a tech, my job is to compare these phones. As far as the internet, Droid and Iphone kick but on the BB. As far as corporate email goes, if you BB is part of a Black Berry Enterprise Server there’s nothing that really compares.
I think that Blackberry is a good phone but the iphone is good for play (Ipod touch). The Blackberry is more business and speed oriented, The iphone is more for games. I have a blackberry curve 8520 and LOVE it! But I also have an ipod touch and LOVE it! Just depends on if you want a touch screen or a qwerty keyboard.