Handango,a provider of mobile software, has identified a collection of trends indicating that third-party applications for BlackBerry, developed by Research In Motion (RIM), have reached a tipping point - the point at which sales begin to accelerate exponentially based on a variety of market factors.
"Using our proprietary customer data, we have identified a set of trends that indicate tremendous momentum around BlackBerry," said Randy Eisenman, president and chief executive officer at Handango. "With accelerating growth in BlackBerry sales, wireless activations remain amazingly high, and the interest and uptake of third-party applications is beating all of our expectations."
Among the key data points identified, overall Handango software sales for BlackBerry are up 1,201 percent over the same quarter last year and 64 percent over Q4 2004. Sales per unique BlackBerry customer are 13 percent higher than Palm OS and are growing.
Handango is also reporting that visitors to BlackBerry download portals powered by Handango are up 29 percent over Q4 2004 and conversion rate for these customers is 69 percent higher than palmOne customers throughout Q1 2005.
The number of third-party BlackBerry applications has grown an average of 41 percent quarter over quarter from Q1 2004 to Q1 2005.
"Having watched mobile software markets for more than six years, we're seeing the same set of trends in BlackBerry that we saw in Symbian OS immediately before application sales skyrocketed in the fall of 2003 and Symbian OS phones began topping our device lists," said Clint Patterson, vice president of marketing at Handango. "All of our data tell us that third-party software for BlackBerry is poised for massive growth in sales, developers and applications."
Handango has also launched a new version of its consumer newsletters for BlackBerry users, as well as new marketing programs for BlackBerry developers to help them take advantage of the growing number of BlackBerry application channels Handango is creating.
