BlackBerry Mobile Market Share Falls Again

BlackBerry’s continuing struggles to clamber back into the mobile device market have been highlighted a new analyst report that shows the company’s market share has fallen yet again.

The number of BlackBerry devices sold is now smaller than those sold powered by Samsung’s Tizen OS, Strategy Analytics’ Global Smartphone OS Market Share by Region : Q3 2015 report has revealed.

Unsurprisingly, Android took top spot, having registered “a slight year-on-year increase in marketshare” followed by iOS and Windows Phone, with BlackBerry now falling to fifth place behind Tizen.

Squashed

Overall, the report showed that Microsoft, BlackBerry and Firefox have all “drifted down” in their market share over the last few months, while demand for the latest iPhones helped push up Apple’s figures.

The open-source Tizen software has gradually been adopted by Samsung to power some of its other products away from smartphones (with the first Tizen-powered mobile, the Samsung Z1, only released in limited countries back in January). So far, it has mainly been used by the company to power its smartwatches, including the latest Gear S2 smartwatches and select smart TVs.

Despite not being powered by its own operating system, BlackBerry will be hoping that its latest device, the Android-powered Priv, set to go on sale on Friday, will help resurrect its fortunes.

If not, the company’s days in the smartphone market could well be numbered, as CEO John Chen hinted back in July that BlackBerry could stop manufacturing devices as part of its ongoing recovery strategy.

Chen said that the Canadian manufacturer would be dramatically downsizing its device portfolio going forward as it looks to focus on other areas of the business.

This would mean only producing one or two devices a year, despite claims earlier in the year that it would release four smartphones in 2015.

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