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Don't Count Out RIM Just Yet?
Blackberry maker RIM has seen its market share rapidly decline in recent months, at least that's what analysts have been saying. But according to new data from Statcounter (by way of Royal Pingdom), Blackberry is growing just as fast as Android in terms of Web usage. In fact, Blackberry users have doubled their Web presence over the course of the past year.
The data from Statcounter includes global visitor stats from more than 3 million websites that Royal Pingdom graphed out in this handy chart:
Although the chart clearly shows Android's rise in terms of Web usage, it surprisingly shows Blackberry's increased market share, too.
Royal Pingdom says, in conclusion, that maybe "we can't count out RIM just yet."
Maybe, Maybe Not.
After all, the notable Gartner forecast, which predicted Android's rise to the number two mobile OS worldwide by 2010 and the possibility of it taking the top spot from Nokia's Symbian by 2014, was based on sales not Web usage.
Increased Web usage only shows that RIM users are doing more mobile Web surfing, not necessarily that the platform as a whole is making a comeback.
The new Blackberry OS (version 6), available now on the Blackberry Torch, offers a much-improved Web browser based on the open-source WebKit technology, the same technology that's used on the iPhone and on Android. And as that OS makes its way into more Blackberry devices in the future, Blackberry users' Web usage will certainly grow even more.
If you're a developer targeting Blackberry users with mobile websites or services as opposed to native applications, this increase in browsing is good news. But if you're looking to get the most bang for your native app buck (or so to speak), you still need to look at the raw numbers of native application users on the top mobile platforms.
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