See Lightning, Hear Thunder, Know the Storm
by John Paczkowski
Posted on January 29, 2009 at 5:00 AM PT
Though its launch was marred by software glitches and a chorus of middling-to-scathing reviews, Research in Motion’s (RIMM) high-profile smartphone, the BlackBerry Storm, has actually sold fairly well.
Certainly, it hasn’t stumbled as badly as some reports have suggested. Verizon (VZ) said this week that it’s sold one million Storm handsets since it began peddling them in the states on Nov. 21.
Now that’s a far cry from the one-million-sold-in-a-weekend, 2.4 million-in-a-quarter sales of Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone 3G (which, ironically, costs less to be build than the Storm), but it’s a decent figure nonetheless. And it suggests that perhaps the consumer market isn’t quite as appalled by the device as it has been portrayed to be.
Said Goldman Sachs analyst Simona Jankowski: “Our retail checks suggest that the Storm is Verizon’s best-selling smartphone, and the rate of returns is relatively low, contrary to recent market concerns and Internet blogs.”
