Handheld Hegemon Update

Apple's handheld business, previously predicted to explode right here, recently posted a +131.6% annual handset unit growth in a market that grew 56.9%, causing share growth from 10.9% in Q1 of 2009 to 16.1% in Q1 of 2010. This share came at the apparent expense of RIM, whose Blackberry products' unit growth of "only" 45.2% led to a share drop from 20.9% to 19.4%. Unit growth like RIM's can't really be called "failure", but the trend suggests that Apple's operating system is on the rise and RIM's – dependent as it seems to be on high-overhead corporate server middleware licenses – is losing its shine.