RIM Users Ready to Move to iPhone or Android

Research In Motion needs to get things moving in order to keep existing BlackBerry users with its platform, new research warns.

Market research firm Crowd Science states 40 percent of BlackBerry users may already be willing to make the move to an iPhone, with a third of BlackBerry users also willing to make a move to Android.

Researchers also found Android users rivaling iPhone users in loyalty, with about 90% of each user group planning to stick with their current brand when buying their next phone.

Asked specifically if they’d swap their present phone for Google’s new Android-based Nexus One, 32% of Blackberry users said “yes,” compared with just 9% of iPhone users. This figure zoomed to 60% for users of smartphones not made by Blackberry or Apple.

“These results show that the restlessness of Blackberry users with their current brand hasn’t just been driven by the allure of iPhone,” said John Martin, CEO of Crowd Science. “Rather, Blackberry as a brand just isn’t garnering the loyalty seen with other mobile operating systems.”

Android users are also revealed to be younger and less affluent than iPhone and Blackberry users. iPhone users being significantly more likely to pay for apps, Android users leading in free apps, and Blackbery users far behind on both fronts.

Android users and iPhone users were found much more likely than Blackberry users to use their phones only for personal use (32 percent, 28 percent and 16 percent respectively). On the other hand, 7 percent of Blackberry users use their phone only for business, with that category of user minimal with iPhone (1 percent) and non-existent in the Android base.

However, all may not be so well in Android land. Not only has the move to introduce the mobile OS caused deep rivalry with former ally, Apple, but it seems sales of the flagship Nexus One Android-powered device may be flagging.

Mobile analytics company Flurry estimates that after 74 days on the market, Google has sold just 135,000 Nexus Ones. That compares with Droid’s 1.05 million sales and the iPhone’s 1 million sales within the first 74-days.

Sources: Crowdscience, Flurry