Research in Motion’s BlackBerry Curve moved past Apple’s iPhone to become the top-selling smartphone in the US in the first quarter of the year, research firm NPD Group reported on Monday.
NPD said a “buy-one-get-one” promotion by carrier Verizon Wireless helped push the Canadian company’s BlackBerry Curve past the iPhone 3G in the first three months of the year.
It said RIM’s share of the consumer smartphone market increased 15 percent over the previous quarter to nearly 50 percent of the smartphone market in the first quarter of the year.
Apple’s and Palm’s share declined 10 percent each, NPD said.
NPD said the BlackBerry Curve was the top-selling smartphone in the first quarter followed by the iPhone 3G, the BlackBerry Storm, the BlackBerry Pearl and the T-Mobile G1.
“Verizon Wireless’ aggressive marketing of the BlackBerry Storm and its buy-one-get-one BlackBerry promotion to its large customer base contributed to RIM capturing three of the top five positions,” NPD analyst Ross Rubin said.
“The more familiar and less expensive Curve benefited from these giveaways and was able to leapfrog the iPhone, due to its broader availability on the four major US national carrier,” he said.
The iPhone is available through a sole carrier in the US, AT&T.
NPD also said that smartphones now make up 23 percent of cellphone sales, up from 17 percent in the first quarter of last year.
“Even in this challenging economy, consumers are migrating toward Web-capable handsets and their supporting data plans to access more information and entertainment on the go,” Rubin said.
Apple’s iPhone 3G was released in July of last year and was the best-selling smartphone in the US in the third and fourth quarters of last year.
Meanwhile, RIM and Hewlett-Packard (HP) announced an alliance to provide applications and services for the BlackBerry.
“Emerging models of communications and collaboration have created an opportunity for RIM and HP to provide service-based mobile solutions that deliver value to customers,” HP executive vice president Ann Livermore said.
“Through our collaboration with HP, businesses will have access to an expanded set of applications and services for their BlackBerry smartphone deployments,” RIM co-chief executive Jim Balsillie said.
HP and RIM said the services being offered included giving the Blackberry the ability to wirelessly print e-mails, documents, photos and Web pages from anywhere.
HP CloudPrint for BlackBerry is “printer-agnostic and driverless and requires simple Internet access,” they said.
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