Through all the problems and bad press Research In Motion has been getting lately, the company often likes to talk about how well its BlackBerry brand is doing overseas. It has to because, according to recent statistics, the picture in America is dismal.
This chart from StatCounter, posted by WMPoweruser, shows the market share of smartphones running BlackBerry OS vs. Windows Phones. It's actually quite surprising: Projecting the trend of both platforms forward a few months, Windows Phone will actually overtake BlackBerry this year, sometime in November 2012.
That would be an impressive milestone for Windows Phone considering it will be almost exactly two years after its U.S. launch in November 2010 that it leapfrogs one of the smartphone brands that helped define the category. At the time, BlackBerry was at the top of the mobile food chain with 34.3% of the market, StatCounter says, and Windows Mobile (the predecessor to Windows Phone) wasn't even a blip on the radar.
The crossover may even happen sooner when a new crop of Windows Phones arrives in September -- Nokia and Microsoft are expected to unveil the first Windows Phone 8 handsets at an event that month. RIM won't be launching its long-delayed BlackBerry 10 platform until early 2013.
RIM's picture around the rest of the world is a little better, but StatCounter still shows falling or nonexistent market share in Europe, Oceania and Asia. It's still inching up in Africa and South America.
What's your take on the fall of BlackBerry in the U.S.? Share your thoughts in the comments.