Research in Motion (Rim) has insisted its BlackBerry is the most popular smartphone in Britain.

The company based its claim on stats from market watcher GfK which, it said, show that more BlackBerrys were bought in December 2010 than any other brand, giving it 36 per cent of the UK smartphone market and 14.9 per cent of the overall phone market.

Unlike many other research companies, GfK tracks over-the-counter sales rather than shipments from vendors.

GfK's numbers show that BlackBerry took 51.1 per cent of the pay-as-you-go market, Rim said, though only 23.3 per cent of the combined sim-free and contract segment.

GfK doesn't share its numbers with mere journalists, preferring to sell its stats to paying punters like Rim. So we can't say how closely Android or Apple's iPhone 4 followed on BlackBerry's heels, though we suspect they aren't far off.

Had the gap been a large one, Rim would surely have released GfK's iOS and Android sales data too. ®

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