Blackberry Was The Most Searched Phone in Nigeria For 2011

Blackberry emerged the most searched mobile phone brand in Nigeria for the year 2011, according to Google’s Insights for Search.

During the year, the Blackberry adoption rate in Nigeria increased as an estimated 1.2 million BlackBerry smartphones were in use as at July 2011, with only about 500,000 subscribed regularly to BlackBerry Internet services.

Also, RIM, the Blackberry phone manufacturer released several phone models, including the highly coveted Blackberry ‘Bold Touch’ 9900, its first bold line to provide a touchscreen.

Several local Blackberry apps also made their way into our Blackberries such as the Nigerian Constitution app, the GoldSMS app, the iCandi mobile rewards app, the Wakanow Travel app, the Afrinolly app, the Ramadan app, the TrueBranches shopping app, ReVoDa election report app, the Goodluck Jonathan campaign app, and the FoI app.

The year also witnessed a major Blackberry outage around the world, including Nigeria for about 4 days and RIM and mobile operators offered compensation to Blackberry subscribers for the inconveniences experienced.

The top search terms for the Blackberry within the past year were, ‘blackberry bold’, ‘free blackberry’, ‘blackberry nigeria’, ‘blackberry phones’, ‘blackberry torch’, ‘blackberry software’, ‘blackberry desktop’, ‘blackberry os’, ‘blackberry phone’, ‘blackberry storm’ according to Insights for Search.

Other rising searches included: blackberry 9900, blackberry bold 4, blackberry empathy, blackberry app world, blackberry playbook, etisalat blackberry and blackberry app.

Surprisingly, one would have imagined that ‘Blackberry Babes’ would make it to the list of most searched terms, considering the fact that ‘BlackBerry Babes’, a four-part movie series about three materialistic women obsessed with their BlackBerry phones was the most popular Nollywood movie on the Internet during the year attracting over 2.6 million views collectively on Youtube.

As for the volume of searches related to the Blackberry smartphone based on location, Adamawa state in the Northern part of Nigeria saw a huge search interest for the device. This was followed by Kwara, Kano, Lagos, Oyo states and Abuja, the country’s capital city.

While the craze of the Blackberry among Nigerians may continue to make the phone brand rule as the most searched term for the next couple of months, we wonder if it would remain as popular in the next one year giving its manufacturer’s recent woes.