Google Android Inches Ahead Of Apple's iPhone
submitted by markodonoghue on 13 May 2010
Smartphones that use Google's Android operating system have outsold Apple's iPhone for the first time in the US.
Blackberry phone maker Research in Motion, kept the number one spot with a 36% smartphone market share. Google Android phones accounted for 28% of sales and iPhones for 21% in the first three months of the year.
The leading brand shake-up is the latest sign of ever increasing competition in the fast-growing market for smartphones, which allow users to browse the internet, send emails and run all sorts of specialised applications.
Last month Hewlett-Packard Co announced it would pay £800m to acquire Palm, which sells two smartphone models based on its WebOS operating system. Microsoft, whose Windows operating system is used in the majority of the world's PCs, unveiled a pair of smartphones last month and recently launched a revamped version of its mobile operating system.
Ross Rubin, executive director of industry analysis for market researchers NPD, said sector rivals were moving rapidly in a bid to secure new customers.
"Recent previews of BlackBerry 6, the recently announced acquisition of Palm by HP, and the pending release of Windows Phone 7 demonstrates the industry's willingness to make investments to address consumer demand for smartphones and other mobile devices," he said. "Carriers continue to offer attractive pricing for devices, but will need to present other data-plan options to attract more customers in the future."
Unlike Apple, Google offers its Android software to other phone-manufacturers, and in April Google said 34 different handsets were for sale that used its operating system.
They included the best-selling T-Mobile G1 and the Nexus One, a sleek touchscreen smartphone developed by Google and HTC and sold directly on the Google website.
In a report earlier this year, analytics firm Flurry estimated Google sold roughly 135,000 Nexus One phones in its first 74 days on the market, compared with the 1m iPhones Apple sold in the same time frame when it released the device in 2007.
Submitted by:
Mark O'Donoghue
Associated Links:
http://bit.ly/8XoBqH
RSS Feed