According to the latest statistics compiled by IDC and Bloomberg, Waterloo, Ontario-based BlackBerry-maker Research in Motion (RIM) is, for the first time, trailing the Apple iPhone in its home market - Canada.

Going by the IDC and Bloomberg data, the Apple iPhone has toppled the RIM BlackBerry in terms of smartphone shipments in the Canadian market; with Apple shipping nearly 2.85 million units of its iPhone in 2011, and RIM shipping 2.08 million units of BlackBerry handsets during the year.

That the RIM BlackBerry has, of late, been losing ground to the Apple iPhone in corporate Canada is quite evident from the fact that, in 2010, the BlackBerry was way ahead of the iPhone, and it topped the Apple handset by almost half a million units. In addition, back in 2008, a year after the launch of the iPhone, the BlackBerry had outsold the iPhone by nearly five to one.

About RIM's loss of share in its domestic smartphone market, which had thus far embraced the BlackBerry's `Made-in-Canada' roots, Toronto-based BMO Harris Private Banking's fund manager Paul Taylor said that the loss of dominance of BlackBerry in Canada shows that the iPhone has gained popularity on the basis of its user-friendly features as well as abundance of apps, rather than any other considerations.

Noting that RIM's loss of the top position to Apple in its home market is "strategically important," Taylor said: "It does identify, even with a home-country bias, how consumers are responding to the greater functionality of the iPhone."