<p>Last quarter, BlackBerry sales plunged 81 percent to just 0.7 percent of the U.S. market share, down mightily from 2009, when RIM held 20.7 percent of the US smartphone market. RIM is certainly hoping that the late-March release of the Z10 will reverse its fortunes this quarter, but it has a long way to go in reaching the heights of its heyday. The BYOD movement is one big reason why.</p><p>In the late 2000s, BlackBerry was the darling of the enterprise business world. Employer-provided BlackBerrys were standard-issue at many large corporations. IT departments loved RIM's secure transport infrastructure, which routed all messages sent from the phone through RIM's Network Operations Center. This level of secure encryption was unmatched by early smartphone options from Android and Apple Apple, which were focused on the consumer market.</p><p>"BlackBerry previously gave you the tools to manage those inherent risks on their mobile devices," explained Mark Gilmore, president of Wired Integrations. "However, devices like Android and Apple did not come with a nice secure little tool kit because that was not their original intended use."</p><p>Since then, Android and Apple grew to capture nearly 95 percent of the U.S. consumer market combined, and many of those consumers clamored to use their preferred personal devices at work. By the end of 2011, studies showed that more than 30 percent of BlackBerry's enterprise users were planning to switch to another device. Since then, a long list of companies from Haliburton to Home Depot abandoned BlackBerry for Apple and Android alternatives. In September, Tech Republic reported most IT leaders considered the iPhone as secure as BlackBerry.</p><p><a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/centurylink/2013/06/11/how-byod-is-pushing-blackberry-out/">Keep reading...</a></p><p>Read also:</p><p><a href="http://www.itnews.com.au/News/346088,government-agencies-cold-on-blackberry.aspx">Government agencies cold on BlackBerry</a> (iT News)</p><p>Explore: <a href="http://news.google.com/news/more?ncl=dGQNLqBm_AidJsMahHlJnuPGJLsqM&ned=us">2 additional articles.</a></p>