The phone sweeps past the competition in the first quarter thanks to aggressive promotion.
Wired PR News – Research in Motion (RIM) has reportedly made significant gains in consumer market share for its Blackberry Curve. As reported by The NPD Group, a well received promotion by Verizon Wireless helped the phone emerge as the best selling smartphone for consumers in the United States for the first quarter of 2009, beating out top contender, the Apple iPhone.
Ross Rubin with The NPD Group is quoted in the report as stating, “Verizon Wireless’ aggressive marketing of the BlackBerry Storm and its buy-one-get-one BlackBerry promotion to its large customer base contributed to RIM capturing three of the top five positions… The more familiar, and less expensive, Curve benefited from these giveaways and was able to leapfrog the iPhone, due to its broader availability on the four major U.S. national carriers.”
Rubin is further quoted as stating, “Even in this challenging economy, consumers are migrating toward Web-capable handsets and their supporting data plans to access more information and entertainment on the go.”
