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Swings and roundabouts for the BlackBerry maker, while Nokia's plans for the N9 carry some implications for its Windows Phone release last this year

For RIM, it 's swings and roundabouts: According to our analysis show that RIM BlackBerry users lost 1m in the U.S. over the past three months the company has announced that it gained1m users in Europe alone over the past three weeks.

What led to the following:
Patrick Spence, Managing Director, EMEA, Research In Motion, said: "Thanks to the more than a million new customers, the BlackBerry community have joined in the Europe, Middle East and Africa over the last three weeks \ alone, we '. re encouraged by the continued momentum we' re experiencing in EMEA, and are grateful for the excellent work of our application developer partners, our carrier partners, our trading partners and our marketing partners who have helped us to make this happen. "

(Distributor partner = carrier, mostly.)

"BlackBerry remains the number one smartphone brand in a number of our markets, including the Netherlands, South Africa and the UK - where we remain the number one smartphone manufacturer of total sales, and number one prepaid phone providers Our smartphones. including the BlackBerry Bold and BlackBerry Curve also high on the sales list in countries like the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, and we recently announced RIM 's international sales for the first quarter had 67% compared to last year \. "

That 's true. We know don 't nothing about how the profits went international, though, the world's profits were up 9.6% last quarter.

What's also not clear is how the prices on those phones are going. The average selling price for RIM phones, according to its results, dipped below $300 in the past quarter; it's still getting squeezed. But clearly, it's pricing to expand users, and that is definitely succeeding. There's a special attraction in the Middle East, where BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) lets people of the opposite sex communicate without having to do it face-to-face: BBM and BlackBerries are hugely popular in those countries for that reason apart from plenty of others. That's part of why Apple is introducing its own version in iOS5.

In the meantime, some interesting news from Nokia. You 'll remember that it showed off the N9, which go to his only Meego's phone.

So, where will you be able to get an N9? Horace Dediu of Asymco, who notes:

Countries where the Nokia N9 not start: Great Britain, Italy, Spain, France, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Belgium, Canada and the United States.

And:

The first Nokia WP7 [Windows Mobile] unit is in Great Britain, Italy, Spain, France, Germany and the Netherlands, due for launch excluded from the Nokia N9 start.

The first involves getting to the U.S., Norway and Belgium \ won 't start either device.

The fact of the overlap (or non-overlap) leads an interesting question: Nokia's first Windows Mobile is actually the N9 's body? It 'sa nice looking phone - and with the slightly updated Nokia under Stephen Elop, perhaps by setting a spirit of economy.