More Bad News for BlackBerry as UK Users Drops Below 1m

  • Thursday, February 26th, 2015
  • Author: Tim Maytom
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blackberry classicDespite efforts to regain their crown as the favoured operating system of enterprise users, BlackBerry has seen its user base plummet below 1m as more and more consumers switch to Android and iOS.

According to eMarketers latest forecast of mobile phone usage in the UK, the troubled smartphone maker now has as few as 700,000 users in the UK, with that number expected to drop to just 400,000 by 2017.

Meanwhile, Android continues to dominate the market, with 21.5m users, an increase of 9.6 per cent on last year, while the release of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus has seen Apples iOS rise 14 per cent on 2014s figure to 12.3m. Even Windows Phone, while considerably smaller than the two main operating systems, has seen decent growth, increasing by 15.9 per cent year-on-year to 3.3m.

Growth has been slowing for all operating systems, and will continue to do so as smartphone penetration increases. Currently, 38.3m Brits own a smartphone, representing 58.7 per cent of the population and 73.6 per cent of all mobile phone users.

This figure has increased 9 per cent on the previous year, but like the figures for individual operating systems, this is continue to slow, with growth of only 2.5 per cent expected by 2019, when 46.8m will own smartphones. By then, BlackBerry users are expected to have fallen below users of other operating systems.

“BlackBerrys fall from grace has been spectacular, but these latest figures show that even its previously loyal core seems to be leaving in droves,” said Bill Fisher, UK analyst at eMarketer. “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.

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