BANGALORE, INDIA: Research In Motion is under significant threat as its corporate customers may soon abandon the BlackBerry in droves in favour of the iPhone and Andriod-based smartphones, according to a brokerage's survey, and the company's shares fell to a 17-month low.

RIM's shares dropped 5 per cent to C$46.16 on the Toronto Stock Exchange Tuesday afternoon after Sanford C. Bernstein raised fears of a decline in earnings due to market share and customer losses. They earlier touched a low of C$45.85.

The company's shares have lost more than 18 per cent of their value this month as growth in its marquee secure email services came under pressure from rivals as well as the threat of a ban in certain countries due to security concerns.

Concerned about militants using the BlackBerry or Internet to plan attacks, India has been pushing RIM to set up local servers to allow full monitoring of its services.

Bernstein – which in July surveyed 200 companies in the UK and the United States on their mobile email products, supported handsets and plans for the future – said 74 per cent of companies with mobile email have already adopted alternative platforms.

"Almost all these companies 'opened-up' their systems in the last two years, half of them in the last 12 months," analyst Pierre Ferragu wrote in a note to clients.

"We expect these companies to progressively ramp up the installed base of non-Blackberry solutions and therefore expect increased pressure on RIM's performance."

About one third of the companies that exclusively use the BlackBerry said they are "likely" to allow the use of other smartphones in the future, according to the survey.

The company's new subscriber additions – a metric RIM stopped revealing at the end of last year – are likely to continue to deteriorate as more customers start looking at alternate options, Ferragu said.

Research in Motion's latest BlackBerry Torch touchscreen phone has met with a muted reception and the company has been under constant pressure from Apple Inc and Nokia.