July 18th, 2007
BlackBerry: two units shipped for every activation
Phil Wolff of Skype Journal found himself at BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion’s annual meeting this week in Waterloo, Ontario.
Major takeaways:
As first reported June 28, RIM’s income is 76% devices, 16% service, 5% software, 3% other.
“And when I asked at the RIM meeting why they had shipped 2.4 million units but only had 1.2 million activations, it came out that the difference can largely be attributed to users buying upgrades,” writes Phil. “So effectively it comes out that there is huge loyalty amongst Blackberry users, so much so that new features and services are driving a significant portion of their hardware revenue.”
Yes, upgrades like the BlackBerry Curve and the BlackBerry Pearl. So the ratio of one activation per two units shipped sounds right, and logical.
As a matter of fact, I am upgrading my BlackBerry. So I guess that I am a statistic now.
Russell Shaw is an enterprise computing journalist, analyst and author based in Portland, Oregon. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
