BlackBerry Users ‘To Drop Below One Million’ In The UK

Steve McCaskill,

Android and iOS now control 96.3 percent of the British market

It seems that British mobile users are increasingly falling out of love with BlackBerry, with a study showing the brand’s customer base is set to hit a new low.

The Canadian manufacturer now has only 1.9 percent of the UK mobile market, as despite a number of new releases, consumers increasingly turn to alternatives. This figure is set to drop further over the coming years, with the number of BlackBerry users falling to below one million by 2017.

Unsurprisingly, iOS and Android devices dominate the British market with a combined 96.3 percent share, according to figures from eMarketer.

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“BlackBerry’s fall from grace has been spectacular, but these latest figures show that even its previously loyal core seems to be leaving in droves. Its market share has been decimated by Android and iOS, and more recently by Windows Phone, which is slowly gaining a foothold in the UK market,” said Bill Fisher, UK analyst at eMarketer.

“As these operating systems continue to see growth in their market shares, it’s likely we’ll see BlackBerry drop off the map completely, leaving us with just three main players in the UK market.”

eMarketer’s figures show that BlackBerry has now fallen behind Microsoft’s Windows Phone software, which is estimated to hit 3.3 million users this year, a projected 8.5 percent market share.

Apple’s iOS devices currently represent one third of the total UK smartphone market share with 12.3 million users, but handsets running Android software have the overall lead with a market share of 56.2 percent, equivalent to around 21.5 million users.

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BlackBerry has embarked on a long period of reinvention in recent by focusing on key markets and product sectors, and has launched two new smartphone devices in recent months in an attempt to relaunch itself into the business market and return to profitability as soon as possible.

However recent analyst figures from IDC showed that the BlackBerry OS accounted for less than 1 percent of the global smartphone market in the third quarter of 2014. Android had 84.4 percent while iOS had 11.7 percent and Windows Phone had 2.9 percent.

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