While this is not much of a surprise as consumers were holding off on buying any BlackBerry smartphones while waiting for the company to release new smartphones running their next-generation operating system, BlackBerry 10. BlackBerry officially announced BlackBerry 10 and two new smartphones running the OS at an event last week. BlackBerry is giving Microsoft even more time to increase sales and market share in the U.S. because it won't launch the BlackBerry Z10 in the U.S. until sometime in March and the QWERTY packing BlackBerry Q10 won't see a release date until mid-May or early June.

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The fight for third place is very important for both Microsoft and BlackBerry who have both been in the top position of smartphone market share in the U.S. Of course this was at a time when Apple's main focus was building iPods and Macs, the iPhone didn't exist. Samsung was building smartphones running Microsoft's Windows Mobile OS but saw the majority of its success come from non-smartphone feature phones.

BlackBerry has a chance of overtaking Microsoft when its BlackBerry 10 smartphones finally debut in the U.S, but the amount of time it will take between now and the launch will certainly give Microsoft and its Windows Phone 8 partners a leg up in selling more smartphones. BlackBerry can't really afford to go a few more months of losing market share in the U.S., but BlackBerry has never been great about choosing and sticking to launch times. As the old saying goes, you snooze, you lose.

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