For the past several months, BlackBerry (BBRY) loyalists have insisted that the new operating system, BB10, would soar at retail. They supported the investor community, which helped raise BlackBerry's share price by more than 99% over the last six months.

When analysts gave their grim predictions for how well BB10 was performing, traders began to think twice about their investment. Other analysts simply stated that the BB10 would struggle to appeal to a wide audience.

Now it seems that the tables are beginning to turn in BlackBerry's favor. After speaking to several "trusted sources," BGR has reported that iPhone and Android users make up half of all BB10 sales in Canada. And according to BGR, they also make up one-third of all BB10 sales in the United Kingdom.

Thus it would appear that BB10 has successfully acquired customers that formerly belonged to the likes of Apple (AAPL), Google (GOOG), Samsung and other corporations.

Considering how big BlackBerry used to be, however, it is possible these are merely old customers that jumped ship -- but have now decided to return.

Either way, this is still a fairly significant accomplishment for the company. Many feared it would be unable to survive the highly competitive smartphone market. These sales, while not yet confirmed, indicate that BlackBerry still has hope -- in some nations, at least.

"We don't admit it but we are nationalist," one Canadian investor told Benzinga on Friday. "We love beer, hockey and BlackBerry."

As true as that may be, his sentiment is not shared by everyone.

"BlackBerry makes products that are boring, lack design and product innovation," an institutional salesmen (who works for a mid-tier Canadian brokerage firm and asset manager) told Benzinga. "In spite of all that, Canadians continue to believe it is a success story. Quite frankly, anywhere else in the world, with the first mover advantage they had in the enterprise market and smartphone sector altogether, it would be considered a failure."

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