The Grinch that stole BlackBerry’s Christmas: Fourth quarter market share hits just 0.6%, according to IDC

BlackBerrry’s market share has collapsed to just 0.6% of the worldwide smartphone market during the fourth quarter of 2013, an alarming 77% year-on-year fall. The new IDC figures are broadly in line with most industry figures, showing Google Android lead the market with 78.1% market share, up 40.3% year-on-year. It led Apple iOS (up 6.7% […]

Andrew Sadauskas 13 February, 2014

BlackBerrry’s market share has collapsed to just 0.6% of the worldwide smartphone market during the fourth quarter of 2013, an alarming 77% year-on-year fall.

The new IDC figures are broadly in line with most industry figures, showing Google Android lead the market with 78.1% market share, up 40.3% year-on-year. It led Apple iOS (up 6.7% to 17.6%) with Windows Phone a distant third, up 46.7% to 3% of the global market.

Overall, 289.6 million smartphones were shipped for the quarter, up 26.5% from the 229 million shipped a year earlier.

However, the clear straggler was BlackBerry.

The figures show the Canadian smartphone and mobile device management company shipped just 1.7 million units for the quarter, down 77% from 7.4 million for the same quarter a year earlier.

Worse, the company’s global market share has slipped to just 0.6% worldwide, a fraction of the 3.2% it claimed during the same quarter a year earlier.

“BlackBerry was the only operating system to realize negative year-over-year change both for the quarter and for the year.

“Moreover, its legacy BB7 outpaced BB10 towards the end of the year, definitely not the results that the company had hoped for when it released BB10 in January.

“With new leadership, management, and a tighter focus on the enterprise market, BlackBerry may in a better position, but still finds itself having to evangelize the new platform to its user base.”

The new figures come as the Wall Street Journal reports BlackBerry lost a major 7000 unit order from the US Army to rival Samsung, which makes a rival mobile device management system called Knox.

The US Army contract will see soldiers supplied with chest-mounted Galaxy Note 2 smartphones for in the battlefield, as part of a program called Nett Warrior.

The South Korean tech giant is also reportedly close to winning a second major contract with National Security Agency as part of a program called Fishbowl, which is aimed at updating the agency’s smartphone fleet.

Both agencies were traditionally loyal BlackBerry customers.