Apple's iPhone beats RIM's Blackberry to number two spot

When it comes to smartphone sales numbers, Apple's iPhone is now number two globally, after less than a year and a half in the market.  While there has been some percieved inflation in Apple's numbers, no one can deny that after less than a year and a half, Apple's iconic smartphone has changed the gadget landscape.

During last month's Q4 earnings call, Steve Jobs boasted that Apple had beat RIM.  He gave a figre of just under seven million units for the quarter compared to RIM's just over six million.  

UK based Canalys has just backed up those numbers and has declared Apple the number two smartphone maker in the world.

Senior Canalys analyst Pete Cunningham said, "It was expected that Apple would figure among the smartphone leaders this quarter, with that huge initial new product shipment, it was just a question of how high up it would be -- and this is impressive."

It is indeed impressive  - especially when you consider a number of factors:

• Apple not only passed RIM but also embattled Motorola which fell to 4th
• A large portion of Nokia's "smartphones" (like the popular N95, N96) have no QWERTY entry, all but eliminating them from real mobile messaging capabilities
• In most markets (like the US with AT&T) Apple is only on one national carrier, while the other companies are carrier agnostic.

Apple's iPhone OS also made similar gains in the mobile OS market share field.

Because of the funny numbers I talked about earlier and a few late high profile releases by RIM  — the Bold, Storm and Pearl 8220, Canalys expects RIM to retake the number two spot during the next quarter.  A possible price drop or product expansion at Macworld 2009 might expand Apple's ability to compete with Blackberry for the two spot.

No matter what happens during the Christmas quarter, Apple has proven that it is now the smartphone vendor to beat.

..thanks to Apple 2.0 for the tables