The smartphone food market is among the most explosive in the technology industry at present , as rivals battle it out for the future of roving devices . According to new numbers from mart research radical , Google ’s Android has take a saltation in popularity , but Apple remain in solid side among smartphone manufacturing business .
Market enquiry firm NPD Groupannounced on Mondaythat Android had taken second place in grocery store share among smartphone operating systems , with its unit sale in the last one-fourth rise to 28 percent . That shine brusk of the 36 percent share that BlackBerry - God Almighty Research in Motion command , but does best the iPhone OS ’s 21 per centum . NPD psychoanalyst impute much of that gain to belligerent pricing on the behalf of Android wireless married person such as Verizon , which has been pushing a corrupt - one - get - one promotion for its smartphones .
But that does n’t have in mind Apple ’s not in o.k. shape . Last week , enquiry grouping International Data Corporationreported that Apple double up its shipmentsin the first quartern of 2010 from the same quarter the previous year . That pose Cupertino ’s oecumenical marketplace share at 16.1 percent among vender of what IDC calls “ converged devices , ” third stead after Nokia at 39.3 percent and flange at 19.4 per centum . And the companymoved a phonograph record routine of iPhones in the second quarter of 2010 , even topping the previous quarter ’s holiday sales .
Meanwhile , a report at All Things Dcites metric firm comScore ’s latest number , which position Apple at 5 percent of the overall mobile equipment manufacturer market place ( that includes smartphonesandconventional cell phones ) . As All thing D ’s John Paczkowski maneuver out , that ’s a pretty telling share for a company with just one telephone .
It ’s important to note that all three of these number measure different things , with NPD talking about smartphone roving operating system parcel in the U.S. , IDC about manufacturer share for converged devices worldwide , and comScore about overall wandering hardware manufacturers .
And even within the figures , there are comparison that are n’t quite adequate . For example , Android ’s improved sales stem at least in part from the multitude of devices now run Google ’s operating system . Unlike Apple , which has a individual earphone running on one toter in the U.S. , Android is supported by tons of models , uncommitted on all four of the major U.S. wireless providers .
In addition , new models of Android phones have been come at a breakneck tempo — it seems that no sooner does a new “ king of the heap ” come out but it ’s supplanted by a competition : the Motorola Droid , the Nexus One , and the Droid Incredible have all been released within the last six months . Apple , on the other hand , releases only one fresh example a year . And we ’ve yet to see a unexampled iPhone in 2010 — well , officially , in any instance .
One thing everybody seems to agree on is that the nomadic market place is growing at a prodigious charge per unit . With a newfangled iPhone presumably on the horizon and Android ’s continued growth , it seems we ’ve got ourselves a horse race .
Disclaimer : IDC and Macworld are both owned by IDG .
