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Gartner: Android Tops iOS in 3Q 2010 Global Smartphone Market Share

Google needs to get their act together and reign in the fragmentation of the Android platform.

It's very difficult to do Application testing when there are so many variants in Hardware, OS Versions, Sensors, and Screen Resolution.

Microsoft's approach of having a specific baseline platform and capabilities list should make it easier on developers. Although Google can't take such a hard line approach, they could still add some license verbiage around when you're allowed to say your phone is running "Android".

It would be interesting to have a full platform-to-platform comparison of all Android devices to all iOS devices (including Touch, iPad, and iPhone). I wonder if any of the App development sites are tracking that?
 
What is the name of the smartphone Huawei Technologies make? On its web site I could not find any smartphone product listed.
 
res1233 said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8B117 Safari/6531.22.7)



I think symbian would sell more if it didn't share its name with the renowned sex machine :rolleyes: I could never see myself owning one. Yes, even more than it already does.
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I just did a little Google search (hard as nails me) and no sex toys turned up. I guess it can't be that renowned.
 
Who cares if Apples iOS is the smartphone market leader or not.

Fact is, iPhone/iOS, is a very, very healthy business for Apple. And just as important: iPhone/iOS users are happy with their devices.

The market for smartphones is huge. You don't need to be number one. There's room for quite a few players. And some healthy competition.
 
Full of Win said:
Given the closed garden approach and multiple design failures of Apple Consumer Electronics w/ the iPhone 4, I'm not surprised.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, the day Apple held their sham news conference on the iPhone antenna failure will be seen as the day they lost the mobile OS war.
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I don't think their design issues impacted their sales that much. 13.4 M units sold is pretty impressive.

Android's sold 20.5M units is probably because there's lots of Android devices and choices - so, I'd say the closed garden (incl exclusivity, licensing) approach that you mentioned above is more likely.
... but keep in mind, also, that some of those 13.4M chose Apple because of the benefits of closed garden.


P.
 
Funny how when Apple leads, all the comments point out that it's because they make a superior product and then when they trail, people point out it's because they make a superior product in limited quantities/models. :rolleyes:

Apple is a company guys, not some kind of god. You don't need to constantly praise them and apologize for them.
 
What a lot of people here don't get is WHO CARES ABOUT APPLE'S PROFIT? Whenever these comparisons pop up, the immediate counterstrike to increased Android market share is "well, Apple makes more profit."

IT'S ABOUT DEVELOPERS! Do you honestly think developers will prefer Apple over Android when there will be double the number of Android customers available to buy your app? Do you think developers will stay exclusive to Apple's ecosystem when they can sell double or more the number of apps by developing for Android as well?

This is Windows all over again, make no mistake. Ultimately developers will go where the customers are, and that appears to be in Android's direction.
 
flottenheimer said:
Who cares if Apples iOS is the smartphone market leader or not.

Fact is, iPhone/iOS, is a very, very healthy business for Apple. And just as important: iPhone/iOS users are happy with their devices.

The market for smartphones is huge. You don't need to be number one. There's room for quite a few players. And some healthy competition.
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Agreed, this isn't like or never gonna be like the PC market. There's gonna be a few OS's around all battling for market share. Which is good for us.

Android is a great OS. My last phone was the Nexus One and before that I had a G1. I just fancied a change when my contract was up and got the iPhone 4. Do not regret it although I'm not gonna lie there's a couple of things I miss on my Nexus. But overall I'm happier with the iPhone.

Both OS's have big strengths and weaknesses.
 
TheSlush said:
Without iPod touch and iPad in there, I can't consider this accurate OS market share data.
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Lots of people complain about this but it would immediately stop being smartphone marketshare if they included non smartphones.

The only way to compare smartphone marketshare is to limit it to smartphones only sadly.
 
AZREOSpecialist said:
What a lot of people here don't get is WHO CARES ABOUT APPLE'S PROFIT? Whenever these comparisons pop up, the immediate counterstrike to increased Android market share is "well, Apple makes more profit."

IT'S ABOUT DEVELOPERS! Do you honestly think developers will prefer Apple over Android when there will be double the number of Android customers available to buy your app? Do you think developers will stay exclusive to Apple's ecosystem when they can sell double or more the number of apps by developing for Android as well?

This is Windows all over again, make no mistake. Ultimately developers will go where the customers are, and that appears to be in Android's direction.
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If the iPhone customers are still spending more than Android customers, then yes. Developers don't go where the customers are, they go where the paying customers are.

That said, I highly doubt Android will achieve double the market share of iOS (note that this study only includes the iPhone), especially with WP7 devices coming out. WP7 competes with Android for manufacturer interest and shelf space on store shelves, but of which will ultimately impact how many Android phones are sold, I wouldn't expect Androids runaway growth (I'm referring to marketshare growth, I expect sales to grow at a crisp pace because the market is rapidly expanding) to continue if WP7 is even remotely successful. I don't expect that the phone OS market will be dominated by any one player in the near future. Successful developers will continue to develop for the iPhone if they want to remain successful, but I'd expect a lot of cross platform apps.
 
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I wish I could understand how Google makes money from their phones. It doesn't make sense to me. From a consumer point of view, they don't seem evil at all. But for some reason, Google couldn't pry my hands off my iPhone to switch. That is the sick part.
 
cvaldes said:
Try the engineering department of your local universities. Smartphone demographic studies have repeatedly shown that Android users are heavily skewed to young male techies. The iPhone crowd is a far more affluent and older demographic, and a lot more women have iPhones.
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I've noticed that too. At our office there are 6 people with iPhones (5 females 1 male). There are 4 people with Android phones - all male. There are 4 with Blackberry phones - all female. The remaining 6 coworkers have misc.
 
OllyW said:
The iPhone is also available free in some markets.
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There is a difference between people seeking out the iPhone and getting it for free in exchange for a contract term versus receiving bogo where you really were only interested in the first phone and the second phone might or might not even get used.

In a nutshell "free" on a contract and "freebie" are different concepts.
 
BornAgainMac said:
I wish I could understand how Google makes money from their phones. It doesn't make sense to me. From a consumer point of view, they don't seem evil at all. But for some reason, Google couldn't pry my hands off my iPhone to switch. That is the sick part.
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Manufacturers have to licence the Google apps (Android Market, GMail, Google Maps e.t.c) to include them in their handsets. I'd guess this involves some money changing hands, then there is the additional supply of ads/user metrics that they can use to make money.

aristotle said:
There is a difference between people seeking out the iPhone and getting it for free in exchange for a contract term versus receiving bogo where you really were only interested in the first phone and the second phone might or might not even get used.

In a nutshell "free" on a contract and "freebie" are different concepts.
Click to expand...
The second handset is not given away entirely free tho is it? In a similar fashion to the single free iPhone "given away" over here, the second phone on a BOGO offer is subject to additional line for 18/24 months.

The cost of the handset can be easily swallowed by the 2 lots of service plus any additional fees/services used throughout the contract.
 
OllyW said:
Not sure about developers but there's definitly more customers. :D
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Most Android phones users i know don't even have internet connection... iPhone wanna be. Anyway good for Android and Google, good os and big market. I would cry if these numbers came from windows mobile... brrrr
 
BornAgainMac said:
I wish I could understand how Google makes money from their phones. It doesn't make sense to me. From a consumer point of view, they don't seem evil at all. But for some reason, Google couldn't pry my hands off my iPhone to switch. That is the sick part.
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$15 per phone for google apps
adMob is integrated into Android Market apps
ads served while people search from the phone
selling data they collect
 
Agreed Apples to Oranges

ChazUK said:
Lots of people complain about this but it would immediately stop being smartphone marketshare if they included non smartphones.

The only way to compare smartphone marketshare is to limit it to smartphones only sadly.
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agreed if android ran on my Vacume cleaner would they count that to
 
ChazUK said:
Manufacturers have to licence the Google apps (Android Market, GMail, Google Maps e.t.c) to include them in their handsets. I'd guess this involves some money changing hands, then there is the additional supply of ads/user metrics that they can use to make money.


The second handset is not given away entirely free tho is it? In a similar fashion to the single free iPhone "given away" over here, the second phone on a BOGO offer is subject to additional line for 18/24 months.

The cost of the handset can be easily swallowed by the 2 lots of service plus any additional fees/services used throughout the contract.
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Google makes money almost exclusively from advertising. Android is designed to basically drive more people to Google search and other Google services in order to get them to click on ads.
 
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