Leaked Data On Verizon Phone Sales: Bad News For RIM, Or Verizon?

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BlackBerry and its manufacturer RIM (NSDQ: RIMM) had a little boost of confidence the other week from some figures that indicated that in the U.S. BlackBerries were used more to consume mobile Internet data than other smartphones such as iPhone and Android devices. But now some further numbers have emerged from Verizon, which point to another, quite worrying trend: no one seems to be buying BlackBerries anymore. What’s the story behind those numbers?

It all started with a report from ITG Investment Research, which got its hands on some data from Verizon Wireless that compared how different handsets were selling at the carrier.

The research, first reported by AllThingsD, noted that in the smartphone segment, 80 percent of smartphone sales in the month of November were of Android devices — with 46 percent of them Motorola (NYSE: MOT) Droid devices.

And as you can see from the sales trends mapped by ITG above, it appears that these November numbers weren’t just a blip, either: the growth in smartphone competition has resulted in a steady decline for RIM, with the most precipitous fall happening about a year ago — around the time that images first began to leak out about the first Android device, Motorola’s Droid, to go onto the Verizon Wireless network. As a point of comparison: BlackBerry, in 2008, was apparently the best-selling smartphone brand at the carrier. (Although admittedly it was also among a much smaller playing field.)

What the ITG figures seem to indicate is that the various phone makers are a lot closer to each other than they were in months past, with no single brand having above 40 percent share. (The big — or little — exception is Palm (NSDQ: PALM), which almost appears off ITG’s chart. However, the graph is charting all phones; and Palm would look healthier if compared only to smartphones. See below.)

While the BlackBerry story doesn’t look particularly promising, the story at Verizon itself may be equally troubling.

Here’s another take on these numbers, courtesy of the analysts at Asymco. They have taken the sales volumes of smartphones and mapped them against the sale of one single device, the iPhone, at AT&T (NYSE: T). Turns out that in Q3 the iPhone outsold all of Verizon’s entire smartphone portfolio by a ratio of nearly two to one.

Conclusion: even with its wide portfolio of devices, Verizon is still underperforming against Apple’s devices. And taking sales volumes of those devices sold by Verizon, in fact all of them have seen declines since August, when the iPhone 4 became widely available.

Asymco notes that the proportion of smartphones at Verizon could become 90 percent Android soon if the current trends continue.

There is still a question mark over whether one kind of OS benefits the operators more than another. Symbian, for instance, has tried to create data services that more closely integrate with the operator’s billing ecosystem, while Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) hasn’t. And in that regard, it’s still debatable whether Android is “good” or “bad” for operators. Will questions like this ever play a role in how handsets get rolled out, or has it come down purely to what consumers themselves want?

One thing that is more certain: when Verizon does eventually begin to offer the iPhone, it will almost certainly level the playing field, and may even tip it in its direction, considering all the flak AT&T has had about the quality of its wireless network.

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