The figures are out for smartphone sales and Android based smartphones are doing incredibly well in the US, while Nokia continues to dominate worldwide.
According to analysts NPD Group Android is now number two position in the US on consumer smartphone sales with 28%, behind RIM (36%) and ahead of the iPhone (21%).
“As in the past, carrier distribution and promotion have played a crucial role in determining smartphone market share,” said Ross Rubin, executive director of industry analysis for NPD. “In order to compete with the iPhone, Verizon Wireless has expanded its buy-one-get-one offer beyond RIM devices to now include all of their smartphones.”
Strong sales of the Droid, Droid Eris, and Blackberry Curve via these promotions helped keep Verizon Wireless’s smartphone sales on par with AT&T in Q1. According to NPD’s Mobile Phone Track, smartphone sales at AT&T comprised nearly a third of the entire smartphone market (32 percent), followed by Verizon Wireless (30 percent), T-Mobile (17 percent) and Sprint (15 percent).
“Recent previews of BlackBerry 6, the recently announced acquisition of Palm by HP, and the pending release of Windows Phone 7 demonstrates the industry’s willingness to make investments to address consumer demand for smartphones and other mobile devices,” Rubin said. “Carriers continue to offer attractive pricing for devices, but will need to present other data-plan options to attract more customers in the future.”
However when you ignore operating systems and you look at the wider World market things change. Analysts Canalys show Nokia as the real smartphone market leaders with 38.8% of the market, RIM in second place with 19.2%, and Apple in third place (again) at 15.9%.
But what the hell do Apple care? The iPad according to Yankee analyst Carl Howe is about to be the fastest product to ramp to $1 billion in sales . Let’s not forget this is 21% on one product from one company. So Android on multiple devices, across multiple companies is always going to be a winner.