Android now 43% of the US smartphone base
Breaks the 50% barrier in new shipments, according to Nielsen, with RIM the victim
Published: 27 September, 2011
READ MORE: Metrics | North America | OS | Android
WP7 Mango goes live this week, the iPhone 5 may turn up next week, Samsung is opening up bada - but despite all this, and intense legal attack, the Android bandwaggon is hardly slowing down. The latest bout of research reports measuring the mobile operating systems all paint a similar picture, of Android approaching 50% market share in its strongest markets, particularly the US.
The latest of these, from Nielsen, calculates that Android is now running on 43% of the north American smartphone base, and in the past three months, it has shipped on 56% of new smartphones. Breaking the 50% share of new sales in north America has come at the expense of BlackBerry, iOS and Windows Mobile, in a market where the decline of Symbian - benefiting Android in Europe in particular - is not a factor. In the past three months, 28% of users bought an iPhoen and only 9% a BlackBerry.
Don Kellogg, Nielsen's director of telecom research, predicted even worse news for RIM once the new iPhone makes its debut. This will inevitably prompt an uptick for iOS, which will hit all the platforms including Android, but with its share falling so rapidly, RIM is particularly vulnerable. Apple will also gain from extending the iPhone to a third US carrier, assuming reports that Sprint will carry the handset are true - though T-Mobile has stated that it will not get an iPhone this year.
In terms of installed base market share, the iPhone has 28% - which, of course, still makes it the largest single device family - followed by BlackBerry with 18%. The previous Nielsen report, published in July, saw Android with 39% share, Apple on 28% and BlackBerry on 20%.
Last month, researchers at Canalys said that Android accounted for 48% of smartphones shipped in the second quarter worldwide, a nearly fivefold increase on the year-ago quarter. Android was the top mobile OS system in 35 of the 56 countries that Canalys analyzed.
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