BlackBerry Passes the 2 Million Subscriber Mark

Research In Motion (RIM) has reached a major milestone: it now has over two million active subscribers to its BlackBerry wireless platform. It is the first wireless platform of its type to reach this number of subscribers.

"This is a significant milestone, especially when you consider it took five years to establish the market and attract the first million BlackBerry users and less than ten months to double that number," said Mike Lazaridis, President and Co-CEO at Research In Motion.

A Company on the Move

RIM is definitely flying high. It has been consistently very profitable for quarter after quarter, which has pushed its stock price ever higher.

The BlackBerry is now the third most popular handheld operating system, and it is gaining steadily on the Palm OS and Pocket PC, according to market research firm Gartner.

Shipments of its wireless handhelds have increased to the point where a third more BlackBerries shipped in the United States last quarter than HP iPAQs.

Gartner even went so far as to predict that RIM may take the lead in U.S. handheld shipments in early 2005.

However, it isn't all roses for RIM. The company is involved in a long patent dispute that could either put a drain on its future revenues, or see the end of shipments of all BlackBerry models to the U.S.

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