BlackBerry crumbles in Canada — RIM losing home market to Apple

Apple's iPhone outsold RIM's BlackBerry devices in Canada for the first time in 2011. RIM, based in Waterloo, Ontario, will be hoping to regain the loyalty of Canadian consumers in 2012, though it's going to be no easy task.

Executives at Canada-based Research In Motion will feel at best disheartened and at worst downright depressed to learn that consumers in its home country appear to be turning their back on its BlackBerry devices in favor of another handset from south of the border. The hometown loyalty appears to be crumbling.

According to data from IDC and Bloomberg, Apple sold 2.85 million iPhones in Canada in 2011, while Ontario-based RIM sold 2.08 million of its BlackBerry devices. This is the first time that sales of the Cupertino company’s smartphone have exceeded those of RIM.

In 2008 — the first full year that the iPhone was available — RIM trounced Apple, with its devices outselling the iPhone by more than five times with its own range of BlackBerry offerings. By 2010, however, with the iPhone 4 creating a stir among consumers, Apple was close to turning things around, selling just half a million fewer handsets than RIM to Canadian consumers.

“BlackBerry, one of the biggest consumer brands to emerge from Canada, had enjoyed more loyalty among locals who embraced its made-in-Canada roots,” Bloomberg’s report said.

Paul Taylor, a fund manager at BMO Harris Private Banking in Toronto, attributed the turnaround to the iPhone’s ease of use and the huge number of available apps.

“For RIM, in its home market, to lose that No. 1 position to iPhone is strategically important,” Taylor told Bloomberg. “It does identify, even with a home-country bias, how consumers are responding to the greater functionality of the iPhone.”