BlackBerry sees iPhone shrink in rear view mirror
Android grows, Palm shrivels
Research in Motion's Blackberries have extended their lead over Apple's iPhone as the top smartphone platform in the US.
During the same period - December 2009 through February 2010 - Google's Android platform saw a surge of nearly 140 per cent to 9 per cent overall, while Palm's share dove 25 per cent, down to 5.4 per cent.
Microsoft's mobile presence is not doing so hot, either, with a dip of over 20 per cent to 15.1 per cent.
Apple's slippage is miniscule - Palm's is not (source: comScore)
These figures come from the most recent mobile-phone survey conducted by comScore, which compared - among other things - US smartphone subscribership during that period with the three previous months.
Although the Android platform's percentage increase is impressive, phones based on it have a long way to go before they catch up with RIM, which holds a 42.1 per cent market share, and Apple, which dropped one-tenth of a percentage point to 25.4.
Fans of the iPhone have little to worry about, however. Sales of the iPhone 3G also slipped before the 3GS was unveiled last June 8 and shipped on June 19. Apple plans to introduce its next version of the iPhone OS this Thursday, and most observers predict that new hardware will appear mid-year.
But all the while that Apple's iPhone and a gaggle of Google Android phones have been grabbing all the headlines (and Palm as well, although for less encouraging reasons), RIM has been quietly churning out its popular Blackberries, and - in this last reported quarter, at least - extending its lead. ®
COMMENTS
It doesn't say
How many of these are "no choice" devices?
e.g. I have a BlackBerry that I was given by work and I love the interface so much that I usually just leave it in a drawer while the SIM sits in an old Nokia that I happened to have lying around.
Not that I underestimate the drawing power of the 'Crack, my wife loved the one her work gave her so much that she bought her own when she left.
At one time Ford and Vauxhall were the most popular cars on the UK roads because they were the ones foisted on people as company cars. It's far more relevant to know what people buy when they are spending their own money.
US centric figures...
It would be nice to see figures for the whole world, not just the US.
Real world figures would have everyone behind Symbian, which has been powering smart phones since before Apple and Blackberry even thought of making them.
At least this time the article does almost make it obvious they are using US only figures, it's just a pity that with the smart phone market the US view is completely out of sorts with the rest of the world.
Oh well, guess this is what we should expect from a .co.uk website where 90% of the writers appear to live in CA.
Symbian isn't even a blip on the radar here
Nokia and co, for whatever reason, have totally failed to make a dent in the market here
I suspect they were not willing to join consumers in bending over and performing unnatural acts to get the carriers to sell their phones ... that's the dominant model here with little/no choice in handsets if they're not available on a plan
Wot no Nokia?
So this is presumably a survey of all the phones that aren't made by Nokia then?
Or perhaps the definition of a smart phone is one not made by a Finish company?
n900?
err, the n900 runs maemo, not symbian. And it's more of a pocket computer with phone features, hence the brickiness of it.
