NPD Group reports that an aggressive buy-one-get-one promotion helped the BlackBerry Curve move past Apple’s iPhone to become the best-selling consumer smartphone in the U.S. during the first quarter.
Blackberry maker Research In Motion increased its share of the U.S. smartphone market to 50 percent in the quarter — up 15 percentage points from the previous three months, the research firm said. By contrast, the market shares of both Apple and Palm declined 10 percent.
RIM’s success was largely due to Verizon’s aggressive marketing of the BlackBerry Storm and its buy-one-get-one BlackBerry promotion to its large customer base, explained NPD Group Director Ross Rubin. “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 said.
Priming the Pump
Confronted with reduced consumer demand for replacement handsets, the nation’s top wireless carriers have decided to put more emphasis on data-centric devices that can help drive revenue growth even in the midst of a recession. To prime the pump, Verizon and its rivals have become far more open to raising their handset subsidies in order to keep the initial purchase price as low as possible.
“The trend centers on both subsidies as well as the marketing of their data and messaging plans, and we are starting to see more options,” said IDC Senior Research Analyst Ryan Reith. Though the carriers already have ‘all you can eat’ data plans, “a lot of consumers are still looking for the happy sweet spot in the middle,” he explained.
Even as the overall market dropped 15.8 percent in the first quarter, smartphone shipments into North America grew four percent, Reith reported last month. “Creativity appears to be the key to success” for large mobile operators during this tough time…