RIM Handsets to Dominate Market Until 2014

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Folks from Pyramid Research have come up with their quarterly handset forecast for 2009, and although some of the iPhone, HTC or Motorola (Droid in particular) users may not like the way it sounds, it looks like the Canadians from RIM are about to dominate the mobile phone market with increased sales until 2014 — when they’re expected to sell 22-percent of the new handsets.

What we already knew is that the market is shifting slowly to smartphones, with as many as 31-percent of the handsets sold in the US this year being categorized as one. What we didn’t know (but certainly hinted) is that, according to the Pyramid Research report, Verizon Wireless should be leading the way when it comes to BlackBerry sales — which today account for more than 50-percent of the US market.

Of course, competitors like Motorola, LG, Samsung or Nokia are not going to sit back and watch — as they already proved it in the last few months, but that’s a different kind of story eh? Check out the press release below.

Pyramid Research just published its Q3 2009 Handset Forecasts, which project a dramatic shake-up in the US market for new handset sales. Our assumptions are based on the dramatic increase in demand for smartphones that has been propelled by US consumers’ love for messaging and mobile Internet-based services on devices with qwerty keyboards, touch screens, HTML browsers, larger screens and sophisticated operating systems.

By our estimates, smartphones will represent 31% of new handsets sold in the US in 2009, up more than double from 15% two years prior. Indeed, market leader Verizon claimed that smartphones represented 40% of its device sales in Q2 2009. We believe that Verizon is the world leader in the sale of BlackBerry devices. Second place AT&T, the world leader in iPhone sales, reported similar success. AT&T sold 4.3m integrated devices in Q3 2009, and 75% were iPhones. At the end of the third quarter, 41.7% of AT&T’s postpaid base had an integrated device, up from 22% in the year-ago period.

According to our forecasts, smartphones will grow to comprise roughly 60% of new handsets sold in 2014. By then, we expect Apple’s exclusive relationship with AT&T to have ceased, which could potentially make the iPhone available to an additional 200m US wireless customers. Today, we estimate that BlackBerry has nearly 50% of the US smartphone market. Assuming competitors Motorola, LG, Samsung and Nokia are able to improve their positioning in this growing segment, we expect BlackBerry’s share of smartphones to decline to 37% — still enough to put RIM at the forefront of the US market with 22% of new handset units sold in 2014.