iPhone gets the hysteria, but Android gets the numbers

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 03 August 2010 10:08

IT Industry - Market

Despite the hysteria around Apple's new iPhone 4, it's smartphones based on Android that are rapidly becoming the dominant force in the burgeoning smartphone market.

Of course the comparison is not totally fair because iPhones come from just one vendor and Androids from many, but for Apple the figures must surely evoke unpleasant memories of the early 80s when the revolutionary user interface of the first Apple Mac took the world by storm, but quickly lost momentum against Microsoft's copycat Windows GUI that ran on hardware from multiple vendors.

The latest figures from research firm Canalys show the rapid rise of smartphones and the meteoric rise of Android to gain the largest market share in the US.

The US is presently the world's largest smartphone market, but is soon likely to be overtaken by China where the prospects for Android look good, and where Apple hardly rates. Apple had 21.7 percent of the US smartphone market in Q2, but less than four percent in China.

According to Canalys some 62.6 million smartphones were shipped worldwide in Q2 of 2010, a 64 percent increase on Q2 2009. Nokia remains the market leader with a 38 percent share, but has lost ground, managing only a 41 percent increase on Q2 2009. The BlackBerry remains in second place with 18 percent, but it too lost market share posting the same 41 percent growth as Nokia. Apple had 13 percent and also lost market share, posting a 61 percent increase on Q2 2009.

The big winner was Android. According to Canalys' analysis of its "detailed, globally consistent data…it is "the collective growth of Android device shipments across a range of handset vendors' portfolios that is most remarkable."

Canalys reports that: "With key products from HTC, Motorola, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and LG, among others, shipments of smart phones running the Google-backed Android operating system grew an impressive 886 percent in Q2 2010 [from Q2 2009]."

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