For HP and RIM, some painful pending inflection points

Market research firm comScore on Thursday released its 2012 Mobile Future in Focus white paper which shows RIM with only a razor-thin lead in the Canadian smartphone OS market -- one that is not going to hold up.

In the three months ended in December, RIM's BlackBerry had 32.6% of the Canadian smartphone market, barely ahead of Apple's iPhone with 31.2%. In third place with 27.8% but gaining momentum is Google's Android mobile OS.

In its report, comScore writes, "While RIM currently maintains the top position in Canada, the market dynamics are shifting and its hold is tenuous at best. Apple looks poised to assume the top position during the first few months of the year, though Android could surprise and get there first. Over the past six months, RIM has lost 6 percentage points of market share with most of it going to Android."

So RIM, long a source of genuine pride for Canada's business sector, could find itself in third place in the Canadian smartphone market a few months from now. And while comScore's white paper tries to strike an optimistic tone -- "RIM’s January appointment of a new CEO likely signals some upcoming strategic changes that may result in more innovative product offerings" -- you have to wonder if it's too late, even in the company's back yard.