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The Untapped Potential of Mobile Apps Marketing

Recently the NPD Smartphone Market Update announced the Blackberry Curve as the best selling smart phone in the United States the first quarter of 2009. According to the report, RIM’s consumer smartphone market share rose to nearly 50 percent in the first quarter, an increase of 15 percent.

As for the global view, Gartner reports that RIM's global market share of smartphones is double that of iPhone's while Nokia's share is 2x that of RIM's and about 4x that of iPhone. (see table below)

However, the dominance of Nokia and RIM smartphones in market share doesn't have any correlation with the disproportionate mindshare iPhone claims among marketers. My point is not to question the decision by marketers to invest in iPhone apps. On the contrary, I applaud brands who are experimenting with emerging channels. The more we try, the more we'll learn and the better we'll get. 

What's really exciting is that there is a sizable untapped potential beyond the iPhone -- something that may be easy to forget with the media attention currently garnered by Apple. Blackberry and Nokia devices are the sleeping giants when it comes to mobile apps, but I suspect they won't be for long. Rather than follow the pack, the smart marketers are already developing apps with the newly launched Blackberry App World and Ovi Store in mind. Are you?

Worldwide: Smartphone Sales to End Users by Vendor, 4Q08 (Thousands of Units)

Company	4Q08    Sales	Market    Share  4Q08 (%)	4Q07   Sales	Market    Share  4Q07    (%)	4Q07-4Q08 Growth   (%)
Nokia	15,561.7	40.8	18,703.3	50.9	-16.8
Research In Motion	7,442.6	19.5	4,024.7	10.9	84.9
Apple	4,079.4	10.7	1,928.3	5.2	111.6
HTC	1,631.7	4.3	1,361.1	3.7	19.9
Samsung	1,598.2	4.2	671.5	1.8	138.0
Others	7,829.7	20.5	10,077.3	27.4	-22.3
Total	38,143.3	100.0	36,766.1	100.0	3.7

Note: Under the name HTC, Gartner counts only the company's own-branded devices. The devices that HTC designs for mobile operators are shown separately under the operators' names in these statistics.
Source: Gartner (March 2009)