US market: RIM unseats Apple in smartphone ranking, says NPD

An aggressive "buy-one-get-one" promotion by Verizon Wireless helped RIM's BlackBerry Curve move past Apple's iPhone to become the best-selling consumer smartphone in the US in the first quarter of 2009, reports The NPD Group. RIM's consumer smartphone market share increased to nearly 50% of the smartphone market in first-quarter 2009 versus the prior quarter, as Apple's and Palm's share both declined.

"Verizon Wireless's 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," said Ross Rubin, director of industry analysis at The NPD Group. "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 US national carriers."

Smartphones, which represented just 17% of handset sales volume in first-quarter 2008, now make up 23% of sales. "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." Rubin said.