BlackBerry Maintains its Top Spot Amongst Business Users

By Paul Carton
February 26, 2008

In a January consumer survey, ChangeWave reported that Research In Motion’s (RIM) BlackBerry was “continuing to take the smart phone market by storm.”

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

As part of a February 11-15 corporate survey, ChangeWave asked respondents involved with IT spending decisions who the manufacturer was of the smart phones their company currently provides.

Nearly three-in-four respondents (73%) cited Research In Motion as the manufacturer of their company’s smart phone.

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

As the above chart shows, the Treo maker came in at 18% – a 1-pt decline that represents just the latest hit in a gruesome year long slide.

Customer Satisfaction

While Apple (AAPL) still has a relatively small share of the corporate smart phone market (5%), the company’s iPhone continues to grab sky-high satisfaction ratings. Nearly three-in-five (59%) of Apple’s business customers say their company is Very Satisfied with the iPhone.

RIM ranks second with a Very Satisfied rating of 47%, though we note this represents an unusually large 8-pt decline from the previous survey.

Palm receives its lowest corporate satisfaction rating in a ChangeWave survey yet, with only 10% of corporate users saying their company is Very Satisfied with the Treo.

Future Corporate Smart Phone Buying

Looking ahead to the 2nd Quarter, RIM (77%) is the dominant leader in planned corporate smart phone buying – having jumped 3-pts since our previous survey in November. Apple (11%) is second, down 3-pts from its previous high.

Palm (8%), Motorola (7%) and Samsung (4%) have each experienced a 2-pt decline in terms of planned purchases, with each company registering its lowest level of the past year.

So we’ve got a huge and still growing market share lead for Research in Motion that for the moment appears near invincible. But at the same time, we’ve picked up an unusual 8-pt decline in the percentage of corporate customers who say they are Very Satisfied with their Blackberries.

Is there a problem brewing here for the Canadian manufacturer?

Keep your eye out for an upcoming ChangeWave report on customer smart phone satisfaction – including the biggest perceived strengths and weaknesses of the Blackberry, Treo, iPhone and other leading models.

Jim Woods co-wrote this article.