Chris Gilmer , Wednesday, February 15th, 2006

Research In Motion Ltd. secured the top spot for small, handheld computers last year, despite the threat that its BlackBerry service could be shut down in the United States over a patent dispute.

RIM held 21.4 per cent of the market for personal digital assistants in 2005 as its sales soared 47 per cent from a year earlier. RIM’s growth sped by the overall market, which expanded by 19 per cent.

Global sales of PDAs hit a record of 14.9 million last year. RIM racked up sales of 3.2 million. “Generally, BlackBerry users are staying put because of the high cost of switching, lack of suitable alternative devices, and the low probability of BlackBerry service being shut down.

Blackberry has since developed a patent workaround called Multi-Mode Edition. Which is a software update that enables underlying changes to the message delivery system.