According to mobile market analyst M:Metrics, the Treo 650 from Palm is the number one smart phone in North America with over 842,713 subscribers.
How can this be when we know that Research in Motion has well over 2.5 million BlackBerry subscribers in the United States alone. Well, there is a catch, of course.
M:Metrics’ May BenchMark Survey is not counting the total number of devices from a particular company, but, the total number for a specific device. Until the Treo 700w and more recently the Treo 700p, Palm didn’t release or sell any smartphones other than the Treo 650 for almost two years. Even though they have both CDMA and GSM versions of the Treo 650, the model number was the same.
Research in Motion, on the other hand, offers two or three or more BlackBerry models per wireless service provider. Although the total number of BlackBerry subscibers in North America dwarfs the total number of Treo 650s, the biggest number of specific model BlackBerry subscribers, comes in at just under 268,000 subscribers of the Blackberry 7520.
I agree…you have to think of all BBs as part of the same ecosystem…most people I know with BBs don’t even know the model, and just think of it as having a BB…
Of course, this illustrates the strength and the weakness of the BB in the market: on the one hand, the BB network is unsurpassed for email and is so popular that it overshadows any one device; on the other hand, none of the individual devices have developed any real identity or bond with a great number of its users.
People mostly buy into the BB system…not into any one device.