Curve The Top Selling Smartphone In The U.S.

I know that you can’t get enough grist on the Apple / Research in Motion struggle, so here’s some good news for RIM shareholders courtesy of the equity research team at Paradigm Capital:

“Blackberry Curve The Top Selling Smartphone In The U.S. For Q4/09
IDC released a report listing the top ten best selling smartphones in the U.S. for Q4/09 which placed RIM’s Blackberry Curve in the top spot. Notably five of the top ten best selling smartphones in the U.S. are Blackberry devices. The Curve took the top spot back from Apple’s iPhone 3GS which had the honours in Q3/09 (displacing the Curve which was number one in Q2/09). It was the first time in 2009 that the top five smartphones where not either Blackberry’s or iPhone’s, with Motorola’s Droid making its debut in third spot. It will be interesting to see if Motorola’s Android device has any staying power over the next few quarters. To date, HTC’s newest Android devices have broke into the top ten in the quarter they were first launched only to fall down and out of the top 10 over the next few quarters (which shouldn’t be too surprising given HTC’s very poor shipment performance all through 2009). The report confirms our thesis that the data reported by smartphone vendors for Q4/09 all failed to highlight more intense competition for RIM. We continue to believe the market is wrong about RIM and the impact of competition and the shares should continue to outperform the market until its valuation gets back in-line with the fundamentals of the Company. We maintain our BUY recommendation and $105 target price.”

This may explain why RIM shares have slowly moved up by $10 over the past few weeks, even as Apple fell. One more reason to consider the Apple / RIM trade (see prior post “Apple / RIM pair trade strategy may still make sense” Jan 29-10).

MRM
(disclosure – I own RIM)