The BlackBerry smartphone and its maker, Research in Motion, were in serious trouble even before last week’s global service disruption.

More than 30% of BlackBerry users in large companies said in September, a month before the outage, that they were looking to use a different smartphone device in 2012, according to a survey of 243 smartphone users in companies with more than 10,000 workers by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA).

“With last week’s outage, I suspect the 30% number is even higher,” said Steven Brasen, the EMA analyst who conducted the survey. “User satisfaction with BlackBerry is by far the lowest of smartphones. A huge number are dissatisfied.”

Brasen said the survey found that 11% of BlackBerry users in large companies are “completely dissastisfied” with the device, while only 2% of iPhone users and 0% of Android users are completely dissatisfied with their smartphones.

Brasen said the opinions of end users are becoming very important to IT executives.

EMA, Forrester and other IT research firms say the majority of new smartphones now used in workplaces are brought in by users who either pay for the smartphones themselves or get reimbursed by their employers.

“The apps are not available on the BlackBerry like they are on the other smartphones and users feel more personally productive on iPhone and Android than with corporate BlackBerry devices,” Brasen said.

“Now that end users are taking control, they are moving away from BlackBerry,” he added. “It’s the end users that are driving IT.”