The latest report by NPD Group states that an aggressive buy-one and get-one sales promotion helped the BlackBerry Curve beat Apple's iPhone to become the best-selling consumer smartphone in the U.S for the first quarter.
BlackBerry maker Research In Motion increased its share of the U.S. Smartphone market to 50% in this quarter - which is up 15% from the previous three months. In comparison the market shares of both Apple and Palm dropped 10%.
Even though the overall market dropped 15.8% in the first quarter, smartphone shipments into North America grew 4%. Analysts say that the carriers are making shifts in their product portfolios, with some having smartphones represent up to 50% of the total, up from 20% last year.
Overall, NPD reports that smartphones -- which represented just 17% of handset sales volume a year ago -- now make up 23% of U.S. handset sales. The top five models sold in the first quarter were the Blackberry Curve, Apple's iPhone 3G, the Blackberry Storm, the Blackberry Pearl, and the T-Mobile G1, which runs Google's Android mobile platform. --------