RIM Dominates

BlackBerry maintains top spot among business users

By Jim Woods and Paul Carton

In a January consumer survey, ChangeWave reported that Research In Motion's (RIMM) BlackBerry was "continuing to take the smartphone market by storm."

Now the latest ChangeWave numbers are in on the corporate side of the smartphone ledger and, once again, RIM is the clear winner.

As part of a February corporate survey, ChangeWave asked our experts involved with IT spending decisions within their companies who manufactured the smartphones their company currently provided. Seventy-three percent cited Research In Motion.

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While the RIM percentage is unchanged from the previous survey in November 2007, RIM's market dominance over archrival Palm (PALM) has continued to expand.

As the above chart shows, the Treo-maker came in at 18% -- a one-point decline that represents the latest hit in a gruesome year-long slide.

Customer Satisfaction

While Apple (AAPL) still has a relatively small share of the corporate smartphone market (5%), the company's iPhone continues to grab sky-high satisfaction ratings. Fifty-nine percent of Apple's business customers said that their company is very satisfied with the iPhone.

RIM ranked second with a very satisfied rating of 47%, though we note this represents an unusually large eight-point decline from the previous survey.

Palm received its lowest corporate satisfaction rating in a ChangeWave survey to date -- only 10% of corporate users said that their company is very satisfied with the Treo.

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Future Corporate Smartphone Buying

Looking ahead to the second quarter, RIM is the dominant leader in planned corporate smartphone buying -- it jumped three points to 77% since our previous survey in November. Apple is second with 11%, down three points from its previous high.

Palm (8%), Motorola (MOT -- 7%) and Samsung (4%) all experienced a two-point decline in terms of planned purchases, with each company registering its lowest level of the past year.

We see a huge-and-still-growing market share lead for Research In Motion that, for the moment, appears nearly invincible. At the same time, we've picked up an unusual eight-point decline in the percentage of corporate customers who said that they are very satisfied with their BlackBerrys.

Is there a problem brewing for the Canadian manufacturer?

Keep your eye out for an upcoming ChangeWave report on customer smartphone satisfaction -- including the biggest perceived strengths and weaknesses of the BlackBerry, Treo, iPhone and other leading models.

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Paul Carton is the Research Director of the ChangeWave Alliance. Jim Woods is ChangeWave's Senior Editor. The Alliance is a network of 15,000 highly-qualified business, technology and medical professionals in leading companies of select industries. The Alliance is surveyed weekly on a wide range of business and investment research and intelligence topics.

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