Android, Apple iOS Chip Away at RIM's Smartphone Share

Google and Apple continued to chip away at Research in Motion's smartphone mobile OS share in the U.S., with Google's Android jumping past RIM's BlackBerry to nab the number-one spot, and Apple inching closer to land at number three.

According to data published by comScore, Google's Android OS smartphone share jumped 6 percent during the first three months of 2011 to reach 34.7 percent, while RIM dropped 4.5 percent to land at 27.1 percent. Apple was close behind to 27.1 percent, a 0.5 percent increase from December 2010.

Rounding out the top five were Microsoft and Palm with 7.5 percent and 2.8 percent, respectively, both a 0.9 percent drop.

Overall, 72.5 million people had smartphones in the U.S. by the end of March, up 15 percent from the last three months in 2010. About 234 million Americans, meanwhile, owned mobile devices. Samsung was the number one device manufacturer with 24.5 percent of the market, though that was down 0.3 percent since December. LG landed at number two and remained flat at 20.9 percent, followed by Motorola and RIM, which took a 0.9 percent and 0.1 percent dip, respectively, to land at 15.8 percent and 8.4 percent.

With the release of the Verizon iPhone, however, Apple continued to make gains and land at the number-five spot with 7.9 percent of the market, a 1.1 percent increase.

Despite Android's dominance, however, older iOS products are apparently more popular than new Android devices. According to data from Canaccord Genuity technology analyst Michael Walkley, there is still strong demand for the iPhone 3GS and first iPad. At AT&T stores, for example, the $49 iPhone 3GS outsold newer Android devices like the HTC Inspire and Motorola Atrix, AppleInsider reports.

Last month, comScore found that Apple's iOS platform has twice the reach of Google's Android in the United States. Apple's iOS, which includes the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch, had an installed user base of 37.9 million, which was 59 percent higher than Android's installed user base of 23.8 million.

PCMag

IDC: Apple close to passing Nokia in smartphone share

Apple is now a large enough smartphone maker that it could soon overtake Nokia for the top spot, IDC said Wednesday. The 18.65 million iPhones it shipped in the winter were enough to give it 18.7 percent of the smartphone sphere just as Nokia's relatively stale growth, to 24.2 million, saw its share drop down to 24.3 percent from a much higher 38.8 percent just a year ago. RIM's quarters don't overlap with most of the industry, but IDC believed that RIM shipped 13.9 million BlackBerrys, leading to a drop from 19.1 percent of the field in early 2010 to just 14 percent.

Almost all of Android's gains were concentrated in Samsung, whose Galaxy S line kicked up from 4.3 percent to 10.8 percent, and in HTC, which moved from 4.9 percent to 5.9 percent.

Senior researcher Kevin Restivo was confident that the market would be relatively splintered given that several phone makers were succeeding based on Android. He warned that Nokia's transition to Windows Phone could cost it valuable share in the interim. RIM was also at risk since its phone mix was increasingly moving towards budget phones like the Curve and might get worse in the spring.

At the current pace, the shift could fulfill predictions of Apple overtaking Nokia as the world's largest phone designer before the end of 2011. Such a swap could be unprecedented in the phone world as Apple only entered the category about four years ago, at a time when Nokia regularly shipped more than half of all smartphones in the world.

Electronista