Yesterday, Goldman Sachs described opening weekend sales of the BlackBerry Torch as “underwhelming”. Today, two other research firms have weighed in with some estimates. Both RBC Capital Markets and Stifel Nicolaus estimate that RIM sold about 150,000 BlackBerry Torch devices over its debut weekend.
It’s not clear why the The Wall Street Journal compares the BlackBerry Torch debut to that of the iPhone 4 (1.7 million sold in the first three days). The latter launched in five countries with multiple carriers whereas the Torch launched only in the US with AT&T. It’s not exactly an apples to apples comparison (sorry!).
The BlackBerry Torch sales may have been dampened by two factors: New device adoption by enterprise customers is traditionally slower than that by consumers. Customers may be waiting to upgrade their existing BlackBerry devices rather than buying a new one.