RIM enters Top 5, replaces Motorola as the market recovers

Smartphones, smartphones, smartphones - it’s what the people around the world want. Can’t argue with numbers - smartphone shipments are on a rise and the market in general is bouncing back from the 2009 low caused by the poor economy.

In the first quarter of 2010, a total of 294.9 million units were shipped - a 21.7% increase over the 242.4 million units of the previous year’s initial quarter. Analysts remind us that this impressive growth is compared to an overall poor year, so a more realistic market growth for 2010 is 11%.

Motorola reported less bleak Q1 financial results compared to last year, but they lost the top US phone manufacturer to Apple, and they fallen behind on the worldwide scene as well - Motorola fell out of the Top 5 and RIM took their place, overtaking Sony Ericsson for the fourth spot.

RIM is gearing up to take an even bigger piece of the market share pie - the newly announced BlackBerry OS 6 is likely to gain more traction with the general crowd than the previous versions and there are new devices to help drive adoption even further.

Aside from smartphones, touchscreens were another sought-after feature, with touch-operated feature phones performing strongly in Europe. In North America, Android is gaining speed and quick messaging devices remained popular.

In Asia and the Pacific (sans Japan) low-cost smartphones were hot-sellers. In Latin America, both feature phones and smartphones recovered from the dip they took last year and social networking features are growing in popularity.

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