well i know android is going to take over very soon but Apple has held strong for a long time considering there is only one new iphone a year and its only on one carrier vs all these other phones which have more than one set every year and are on at least two carriers
Who told you that?
Apple does use the percentage figures during Keynotes etc, but in essence, these figures are meaningless. The only two figures that really matter to Apple are the profits and the number of key app developers that choose iOS first. And Apple are on top with both.
The profits that derive from the activity generated by this kind of market leverage, and the unique total of eight revenue streams [per product], outweigh anything any of the other players could ever muster.
All the other numbers are fud.
And since Android isn't a profit entity, all the other manufacturers swinging on Google's coat tails [because they're too lazy to develop their own OS], are dividing the 'Android' share between them.
Not until the weaker ones fall out of the race, and one [or two] become dominant, will any of them present any real threat to Apple.
Google did have that chance with the product they should have called the Google Phone or GooglePhone. I've said this a million times. Google failed big time with the stupidly named Nexus one.
There is one company, if run well, and if they managed a Damascus style conversion in customers' eyes, that could challenge Apple, and that's MS. But we all by now know that isn't going to happen.
All of this boils down to that old adage: Turnover is vanity, Profit is sanity...
Oh, and the number of female geeks is growing, but not significantly enough to affect the stats in favour of Android options. Girls and women don't want to tinker or jailbreak. Predominantly they just want something cool that works. In that respect I'm with the girls here.
So, because females represent 50% of the mobile phone demographic, and will shortly surely represent 50% of the smartphone demographic, they hold the key to any manufacturer's success.
Therefore, he who converts women from feature phones to smartphones wins. That was obvious from day one.