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Android outsells Apple 2:1

But BlackBerry is the real loser

New numbers from market tracker Nielsen show that more than half of smartphone punters who acquired their handset in the past three months opted for Android.

The precise figure is 56 per cent, which compares well with Nielsen's Android's overall market share of 43 per cent.

It shows that Google's OS is gaining ever more ground and, if the trend continues, will increase its share of the market.

So who is it taking market share from? Not Apple, Nielsen's numbers suggest, which accounted for 28 per cent of smartphones acquired in the last three months - and 28 per cent of the smartphone market as a whole.

Nielsen smartphone sales US

Source: Nielsen

Apple's three-month share will undoubtedly increase soon when it starts getting the iPhone 4S and/or iPhone 5 in people's hands. But there doesn't appear to be much else on the horizon to challenge Google.

If anyone needs to do so, it's RIM. Nielsen's numbers show that Android has been eating into every other smartphone platform's share, but RIM's in particular. According to Nielsen, BlackBerry accounts for 18 per cent of all smartphones out there, but only nine per cent of those handsets acquired in the past three months.

Windows Phone, Symbian and all the rest currently have, together, 11 per cent of the market, but only six per cent of quarterly sales.

Nielsen's numbers derive from interviews held in August with an unspecified number of handset buyers. Nielsen knows its stuff and isn't going to use a statistically insignificant sample. And, yes, these are US numbers, not global. ®

Narrow scope of figures not clear until end

Interesting figures, but could you highlight the fact they're US-only numbers a bit higher up please? That doesn't make them invalid or not worth publishing, but it does limit their scope and the lessons to be drawn from them.

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By "barely win" do you mean outsell 2 to 1?

In the interests of full disclosure I personally use Android but have no problem paying for Apple kit for my wife as that's what she likes. What I do have a problem with is people dissembling (aka "lying").

By all means point out that Apple's figures are very impressive given that they are made up of only 1 phone versus x number of Android models - I'll listen to an argument like that.

Resort to misrepresentation and I'll call you out for the idiot you are!

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Surely beer outsells champagne?

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Anonymous Coward

Fanboys, please...

...everyone just settle down.

They're both just phone OS's - Nobody's shat in your cornflakes, FFS. If this data bothers you in the slightest, you really need to work on those insecurity issues.

The only ones who should draw any conclusions are the app devs, who's business model depends on the success of one OS or the other (assuming they only dev for one platform).

If you're just a user, then chill out FFS. As long as it bloody well works for you, that's all that matters.

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Anonymous Coward

Title is Optional

Really?? Did you read the same article as me?

The chart shows OS not device... It's Apple's choice not to licence iOS to other vendors, and while they have a pretty healthy market share, they are not exactly growing.

tldr; "One phone OS sells twice as many as another phone OS"

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