BlackBerry Customers Unfazed by Legal Troubles

The ongoing legal battle between Research In Motion (RIM), maker of the BlackBerry handheld, and NTP, a patent holding company that’s suing RIM for infringement, did not deter consumers from purchasing BlackBerrys in 2005, according to research firm Gartner, CNET News.com reports.

Todd Kort, a Gartner principal analyst said RIM shipped some 3.2 million BlackBerry units last year, up 46 percent from the 2.2 million shipped in 2004, according to CNET News.com.

Palm, the leader in the worldwide PDA market in 2004, was overtaken by RIM for the top seat, as its shipments dropped more than 25 percent, CNET News.com reports.

The market share numbers Gartner took into account include wireless PDAs, like the BlackBerry 8700, which is primarily employed for data; but they exclude smart phones, such as Palm’s Treo and the BlackBerry 7100, typically used for voice calls, CNET News.com reports.  This slants the numbers slightly, since Palm has focused on its Treo smart phone offerings recently, straying away from the traditional PDA market.  In 2005, Palm shipped some 1.95 million Treos, more than doubling the units shipped in 2004, CNET News.com reports.

The numbers also don’t take into account the roughly 858,000 BlackBerry 7100 units that were shipped last year, because that smart phone product was not included in Gartner’s tabulations, according to Kort.  Not including the BlackBerry 7100 series smart phones, RIM owns some 21.4 percent of the market, CNET News.com reports.

For CIO’s continuing coverage of the BlackBerry debacle, check out BlackBerry on the Edge.

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