RIM sells 50M BlackBerrys, Symbian says "how very quaint"
By Chris Ziegler 
posted Feb 5th 2009 9:01PM
posted Feb 5th 2009 9:01PM
[Via Electronista]
posted Feb 5th 2009 9:01PM
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Why is the author comparing the number of RIM handsets sold to the number of handsets WITH Symbian on it? Not a fair comparison seeing as Symbian doesn't have its own line of handsets.
Yes, what Fernando said.
Right this like saying Dell you are awesome for selling 100 million laptops but Microsoft has shipped 500 billion copies of Windows flavors, try to keep up will you? Frankly I'm just shocked and amazed with the love of the iPhone around this place some kinda of comparison that favors the iFail didn't wind up in this article..
BlackBerry and Symbian are both platforms, it's as simple as that -- and frankly, as Symbian goes, Nokia is the elephant in the room.
And please, cut out the iPhone fanboy crap, it's getting really, really tired. It was tired six months ago. We don't show any iPhone bias and I'd challenge you to prove otherwise.
I want to read this out laud. I fail. Ifail ifail. LOL
Okay, scratch RIM devices and substitute the phrase for Blackberry OS-powered devices.
OSs vs OSs, fair now?
still not fair.
that's like substituting Mac OS X devices for Mac OS X, and comparing "OSes vs. OSes."
@andrew S,
Hardly. More like comparing Mac OS X devices and Solaris devices.
Symbian is more and more a Nokia-only outfit (since both Motorola and Sony Ericsson abandoned the UIQ flavor). Only a couple of Samsung handsets make it incomplete (and their sales are pretty low compared to Nokia). Also, Symbian is now a company that is fully owned by Nokia.
Basically, you are comparing the sales of Nokia S60 phones (mainly their N- and E-series devices) with BlackBerry devices. Simple as that.
Truly not fair
this isn't fair due to the fact that the Blackberry OS is mainly for smartphone customers and SEEKED out by people who WANT a blackberry. Symbian ended up in the hands of people who just wanted to use a phone. How many people have owned Symbian devices and never ever even knew that they did. LOL ifail. To say that Symbian is anything like Blackberry OS is to say that 5 times more (250million vs. 50 million) people go out to the store asking "where are your Symbian OS driven devices?" vs the number of people that say "do you guys have Blackberries in stock?" I think you can see my point. Your comparison is WACK.
There is no such comparable unit of measurement, what you want to see.
You can compare numbers to numbers, but there is no such unit as "number of people who go in the store and can exactly name the OS on their yet to be purchased smartphone". (Not to mention, that ppl would use Blackberry as the name of the phone, not the OS.)
It's really sounds like common excuses:
"Apple sold 10 million phones, Nokia sold 3xx million, but still Apple wins, because it's only one model" or
"iPhone 3G sold 1 million in 3 days, Nokia 5800 sold 1 million in 45 days, but still the 5800 is better, because Apple started with 22 countries and Nokia started with 5".
Yes, these are important things, which put the differences into perspective - but the fact is still 50 million vs 250 million (or 3 days vs 45 days).
Its still an apples to oranges comparison. BB is mostly used in the US and Symbian is used worldwide- think of the sheer population difference youre talking. Its a totally different market.
And yes # of devices do matter. If you sell 100 variants of a device with an OS youre sure to appeal to more people than an OS on 10 models. Plus lets not forget BB is mainly an enterprise tool and Symbian is a consumer product, again appealing to a MUCH larger number of people.
That's BS. Just because the bulk of USERS are in the US does not discount the fact that Vodafone, Orange, Telus, and other non-US carriers do have BlackBerrys. Also there are more Nokia variants in the US than BlackBerrys. RIM and Nokia are both global companies with no inherent disadvantages, so your argument holds no weight.
Second, RIM is becoming more consumer oriented with the BB Flip, Curve, Pearl and now the Storm, which all outsell the enterprise variants AND all of which were available last year. Your second argument also holds no weight.
BOOHOOHOO people, Blackberry sucks......honestly if you compare the 8900 to the E71......the bold just has a bigger screen and some larger buttons, still same OS. NO EXCHANGE FOR YOU! lame.
What's interesting is not the total number of handsets but the *rate* of handset sales. RIM has 21M subscribers in 2009, and they hit their *first* 1M total subscribers in 2004, so they have added 20M subs and sold likely 45M of that 50M in the last 5 years alone. Bully for them.
Actually, your analogy is wack. You think that everyone who "seeked" [sic] out BlackBerry devices knew everything that they did? All those people who were forced to get a BlackBerry because that is what their company's IT department told them to do? Or all those kids who started buying the Pearl because it was cool? Or people who have been buying the Storm because they want something similar to the iPhone but are stuck on Verizon?
Regardless, the point of this article isn't to try and make a direct correlation between sales of BlackBerry devices and that of Symbian or Windows Mobile devices. It's just to point out that RIM has reached a milestone but it still has a way to go before it can challenge the other mobile platforms.