BlackBerry Could Ship 40 Million Handsets in 2013

BlackBerry BBRY could ship an extremely large number of smartphones this year. The ailing smartphone maker -- which fell to third place after Apple's AAPL iPhone and Google's GOOG Android platform debuted -- has reportedly experienced a fair amount of growth this quarter. If that growth is maintained, it could result in a significant sales increase in 2013. According to DigiTimes, BlackBerry could ship 30 million to 40 million handsets this year. Despite the (potentially) good news, BlackBerry shares are down more than two percent this afternoon. The stock is up more than 23 percent this year, however, as investors continue to buy into company's potential as a mobile phone maker. With so many Android devices on the market (and millions of additional units manufactured every year), it may be impossible for BlackBerry 10, iOS 7 or any other operating system to catch up. While Apple dominates the U.S. market for producing the single most popular device, its overall market share is far lower than Android. As of September 2012, Google claimed that 1.3 million Android devices were activated every single day. That was a huge increase over the June activation numbers, which reached 900,000 units per day. At the same time, Apple typically sells around 30 million iPhones per month. The company actually sold more than that over the last two quarters, but sales are expected to decline in the June quarter as consumers wait for the iPhone 5S to arrive. It is possible that the same has happened to BlackBerry. When BB10 was released earlier this year, only the Z10 was available. The Q10 will ship to T-Mobile TMUS and Verizon VZ stores on Thursday, June 6. It should be interesting to see how the new platform performs once the keyboard-equipped iteration is released. Louis Bedigian is the Senior Tech Analyst and Features Writer of Benzinga. You can reach him at 248-636-1322 or louis(at)benzingapro(dot)com. Follow him @LouisBedigianBZ