Needham Research’s analyst Charlie Wolf is estimating that the early sales success for BlackBerry Storm won’t last past the holiday season. He says that the Storm had a strong launch, but its sales will drop in Q1 2009. Wolf blames the drop in sales on poor reviews that have damaged the reputation of the device and tough competition from other smartphones.
“The competitive landscape in the consumer segment of smartphone market has heated up significantly as reflected in the success of iPhone and the imminent arrive of phones running on Google’s Android operating system,” Wolf notes. “This is taking a toll on RIM’s gross margins. And it could lead to a deceleration in the growth of new subscriber activations in 2009.”
It’s been reported earlier that the return rate for BlackBerry Storm is also very high. To dispute this claim, Verizon announced that BlackBerry Storm was the fastest selling PDA in their cellphone lineup, but they didn't say what was the return rate for the new phone. This puts doubt in customers mind and would negatively affect BlackBerry Storm sales in future. Both Verizon and RIM are trying to put positive spin on Storm sales, but they are not giving any hard numbers. We think that even though, Verizon has a bigger network and RIM has bigger following that the T-Mobile or G1 handset, it will be Android based G1 handset that will cross the one million mark first in US.
[Via Macnn]