According to a new report from research firm NPD, iOS’s U.S. market share (by sales) jumped from 26% in the third quarter of 2011 to 43% by October and November. Android, however, came out on top, with 47% market share during those two months, down from 60% in Q3.
I find that hard to believe…
I am a Apple fanboy too 🙂
Either way, I hope Android and iOS keep doing well, keep competing hard.
The article claims that the market share of iOS jumped from 26% to 43% in less than a quarter. As if that weren’t already hard to believe (not to mention Apple’s habit of meaning “units shipped” when they say “units sold”), there’s no indication of what “market” these guys are talking about. iOS powers not just iPhones but iPads, iPods, and Apple TV’s as well.
Edited 2012-01-10 21:28 UTC
It is an amount of sales, not units on the market, which is presumably more sensitive to sudden changes. You are right that it is still weird to see such a big jump all of sudden though.
Windows Mobile gained sales and is head on head with Windows Phone 7 ? Damnit … it seems to be that Windows Phone 7 is really a loser.
Consider the charts for Apple product sales.(You can derive them from Apple’s reports)
A) December quarter has always had a huge spike in iPod sales, iPhone sales also had a big bump
B) Q4 had iPhone4s released and new releases always drove the sales up
If you put them together, you can see that such a jump is absolutely possible. In addition, iPhone now spans 0 to 400 price ranges.
So nothing “shocking” here.
But share as part of what…smartphones? Then why are they including ALL iOS devices? Cf. my complaint above.
One of the worst articles I’ve read in a while.
Hm, I wouldn’t expect you to give visibility & reinforce that myth… (one coming from total contract-costs blindness of course)
and by zero do you mean an used 3gs given by a friend who upgraded?
iOS = three phones from one company.
Android ~ 50 phones from 5+ companies.
Android: slight lead in total sales.
…Android is on top!
Better yet, let’s get actual-ish numbers.
sprint.com Android = 21, iPhone = 1
verizonwireless.com Android = 24, iPhone = 2
att.com Android = 19, iPhone = 3
t-mobile.com Android = 16, iPhone = 0
US Android:iPhone product ratio = 13.3:1
US Android:iPhone Sales ratio = 1.09:1
…Android is on top!
Oh, wait, throw in the Tablet and iPod Touch “markets,” and the combined force of everything that runs Android is reduced to a rounding error.
…a rounding error that, if you lump together a bunch of unrelated devices from different companies in an artificially narrow category, is totally on top!*
(*Where by “totally” I mean “slightly.”)
With leads like that, imagine all the money Android must be making for all parties involved.*
(*Where by “all parties involved” the truth is actually Samsung and no one else. Google makes $8-10 per user per year in ad revenue, and all its other OEM partners are struggling. But I’m sure this whole operation will somehow stabilize and crawl into the black, while retaining its unit lead and ironing out all the ownership experience issues like the fact that Android phones don’t get any updates. Yup, any day now.)
I used to frequently read fanboi comments like this about Macs around 20 years ago. Apparently Macs were super profitable and all the PC makers were making five cents net profit per machine profit.
Remind me how that brilliant Apple Mac high margin business plan worked out.
Actually, I think it was the stupidly high profit margin that Mac’s had in the 90’s which kept the company afloat while their sales tanked… It certainly wasn’t a winning long term strategy, but they did keep their head above water until St. Jobs returned to lead them to salvation
On Topic: I’d be surprised if Apple’s gains are as high as that, these “estimates” seem a bit wild. Let’s wait until the official figures are published by the various companies (if they actually choose to publish them!)
I will say this though, in September I was seeing a very high diversity of smart phones on the Tube (London underground)… Even saw a few people with blackberries and an ASUS tablet! But for the first two weeks of January, I would say 90% of devices ie seen have been Apple… Probably just reflective of people getting a new phone for Christmas and using them more than those of us who have had smart phones for years
Australia is traditionally a very strong iPhone market.
However Telstra, Australia’s largest phone company, currently doesn’t even list the iPhone 4s. They only have the 3GS at a very expensive $429 on a prepaid plain.
http://www.mobicity.com.au/ a major online retailer doesn’t have a single Apple model amongst their Top 10 best selling smartphones.
ok now imagine all if those oems still trying to compete with iphone with their s*tty feature phone oses. Android has literally saved their asses and did it for free. Samsung? Good luck with bada.
Ok they may not extract heaps of money manages to from its fan base they still earn much more than they would with feature phones.
TC title is ‘iOS Market Share Up From 26% In Q3 To 43% In Oct/Nov 2011.’ So you’ve already buggered one thing up, it covers all iPhones.
TechCrunch’s title is even worse compared to the article content! I swear no editors know how to read or write anymore.
It’s worse than that… both titles lack “in the US” (one atypical place – say, with strangely low rates of mobile phone penetration among other things – which represents minority of sales; yes, a mention just line below, but the issue can make enough of a difference to make the titles quite spurious)
Because worldwide, who knows… maybe iOS gained, maybe their relative shares remained roughly unchanged, maybe Android continued its gains – we just don’t know.
(we might try to guess something from the worldwide web traffic http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_os-ww-monthly-201107-201112 which seems to roughly reflect the report …but then, that’s also certainly partly how US dynamics tend to be over-represented in such web visitors stats, and how people with copious data contracts played with new toys a bit more)
(Beta & AV, something to do with b3ta?)
I recall Thom saying how this would not happen because Samsung release the Galaxy II S to counter the iPhone 4S.
Seriously though, I am glad both iOS and Android are doing well, it motivates both Google/Samsung and Apple to compete hard.
“This” still quite possibly hardly happened. The news piece talks only about one atypical market (just very loud & visible in general, and one which you might perceive almost exclusively in particular)