Economic Woes Can’t Stop BlackBerry Growth

Source: Reuters

For the first time, Research In Motion’s (RIM) BlackBerry cornered 10 percent of U.S. mobile phone sales in the second quarter in a market that grew more than 5 percent despite economic concerns, Strategy Analytics said on Monday.

The research firm said Canada’s RIM (NASDAQ: RIMM) was seeing huge success with both consumer and enterprise handsets in the United states where total mobile phone shipments rose 5.3 percent to 41.9 million units from 39.8 million in the second quarter of 2007.

Also in the second quarter, Motorola (NYSE: MOT) managed to keep the lead in its home market.

While some analysts have been expecting Motorola to be overtaken by rivals even in its strongest market, the phone maker had better-than-expected U.S. sales in the quarter, giving it 25.8 percent of the U.S. market compared with its global share of less than 10 percent.

Motorola barely squeaked ahead of LG Electronics to keep its global No. 3 ranking in the second quarter. It has been losing market share to rivals such as Nokia (NYSE: NOK) and Samsung Electronics for well over a year amid criticism of its handset line-up and a lack of phones with high-speed Web links.

“Motorola is not yet out of the woods, but these are encouraging, early signs of stabilization,” said Strategy Analytics analyst Neil Mawston, citing the company’s strong distribution network and its U.S. carrier relationships.

Strategy Analytics said LG took second place in the United States for the first time in almost two years, due partly to sales of phones with high-speed Web links by the country’s No. 1 wireless service AT&T (NYSE: T).