Games Dominate Smartphones, No Wonder BlackBerry is Hurting

Android, Apple, and RIM represent 90 percent of the US smartphone market share. What do people use their smartphones for?

The basic standards of calling, emails, and web browsing are given. Aside from that, user want games, judging by the apps download data compiled Neilson.

Users like games so much that 64 percent of individuals tracked by Nielsen in a 30-day period downloaded one. Moreover, users are most willing to pay for games, followed by entertainment, productivity, maps, food, and news apps.

Users also want weather, social networking, maps, music, news, entertainment, banking, videos, shopping, dining, sports, productivity, IMs, travel, health, education, and personal care services on their smartphones.

People are increasingly treating their smartphones like computers, i.e. devices they use more and more for life's work and play.

In this aspect, BlackBerry loses out because it simply doesn't have the apps and functionality of Google and Apple phones. The pioneer of the smartphone industry with over 50 percent of market share at one point, RIM BlackBerry is now 3rd at 24.7 percent for the three months ended May 2011.

The leader in the quantity and quality of apps is Apple. However, it trails the Google Android in market share likely because Google offers more choices in terms of the type of devices available and what users can do with these devices.

For the three months ended May 2011, Google had 38 percent market share and Apple had 27 percent market share.