Nielsen says Android has become the number one smartphone operating system in the United States, beating out RIM BlackBerry and Apple iOS in market share. Android has now reached 29% market share, compared with RIM’s 27% and Apple’s 27%.
But an analysis by manufacturer shows RIM and Apple to be the winners compared to other device makers since they are the only ones creating and selling smartphones with their respective operating systems.
HTC follows with 12 percent of consumer smartphone owners having an HTC Android device and 7 percent owning an HTC device running a Microsoft OS. Ten percent of consumer smartphone owners had a Motorola Android device and one percent owned a Motorola device running a Microsoft OS. Android seems to attract more young consumers, according to Nielsen.
Consumers in the United States are more likely to buy a smartphone in 2011 than PCs, mobile phones, e-readers, media tablets and gaming products, according to a recent survey by Gartner. Frost & Sullivan predicts the share of smartphones shipped in North America is expected to rise from 24 percent in 2009 to 67 percent in 2015.
World-wide market share is quite different, according to Canalys, who says the fourth quarter of 2010 shipped 101.2 million units representing year-on-year growth of 89%. In 2010, Nokia, the world leader in mobile phone sales, shipped 461.3 million units, a 7.5 percent drop in market share from 2009. Worldwide mobile device sales to end users totaled 1.6 billion units in 2010, says Gartner.
Mobile subscribers totaled 5 billion in September, 2010, reports iSupply. That’s approximately 73.4 percent of the earth’s population, notes the research firm.
“If the importance of an event can be measured by the number of people it affects, then the proliferation of wireless communications stands out as one of the most significant phenomena in the history of technology,” said Dr. Jagdish Rebello, senior director at iSuppli.
