The Android and iPhone war still rages on, but some new stats put an interesting spin on just where the two are headed in terms of overall mobile OS and device share. It’s no surprise that Android is gaining quick ground in the smartphone space. Every single carrier carries one or more Android smartphones and the rate at which handsets are released with the Google platform makes my head spin. So just where is it in terms of mobile OS share versus iOS?
When it comes to just OS share, iOS still has the edge over Android – 25% versus 19.9% of overall smartphone OS market share. RIM is down at a lowly 11.3% while the rest is simply made up of “Other” – presumably Symbian and Windows Mobile devices. While Apple has a bit of a lead over Google here, it’s clear that the landscape will soon change in the coming months.
However, when you take the iPod and iPad away from these numbers, both of which run the iOS operating system, numbers are dramatically different. Here we see that Android has a very clear edge over the iPhone when considering OS market share in terms of smartphones only. Android remains at 19.9% where Apple drops to 14.3% when we look only at the iPhone.
Let’s also not forget the Android tablets floating in the wild, especially the 1 million Samsung Galaxy Tab tablets that were sold during its first month of availability. These numbers are sure to grow as more manufacturers are readying to jump on 2.3 Gingerbread and the coming Honeycomb versions of the Google OS for their own tablets.
We recently learned that the forecast for this time next year shows iOS and Android neck-and-neck for U.S. smartphone market share. While an operating system available on only one device has impressively held up against an army of Android handsets, iOS could see a huge boost in the U.S. alone if Verizon were to carry the iPhone. If a recent study is to be believed regarding the Apple smartphone’s ability to steal Verizon’s thunder in smartphone sales, it would only be a tremendous benefit as an add-on to the carrier’s line-up. It may also just tip these numbers back into Apple’s favor.
[Via: Millenial Media]