Earlier this week it came to my attention that the public’s honeymoon period with Apple’s iPhone may be finally drawing to a close.  NPD Group, a US market research company, reported that during the first quarter of this year, sales of Android-powered smartphones overtook sales of the much loved iPhone for the first time.  Following an online survey of 150,000 consumers it found that 28 per cent of smartphones sold between January and March 2010 were Android based whilst iPhone sales during the same period accounted for 21 per cent.  With 36 per cent the US market leader is currently Research In Motion (RIM), makers of the popular Blackberry range. (Windows Mobile lags way behind the others with a mere 10 per cent.)

This is an interesting development, and even more significant when you realise that only 12 months ago RIM were on 46 per cent, Apple were on 19 per cent and Android had only 6 per cent.  So in the last year RIM’s share has dropped 10 per cent, Apple’s is up a measly 2 percent whilst Android has grown a whopping 22 per cent!

So why have we seen such a swing in Android’s favour?  It seems likely that much of Android’s popularity stems from the fact that it has been adopted by a striking list of handset manufacturers including Sony Ericsson, Samsung, Motorola, HTC and LG.  This has in turn led to a wide choice of Android devices – currently over 30 in the US – that consumer’s can select from.  Perhaps even more significantly, Android devices offer great value for money compared to the iPhone.  Here in the UK there are many offers around which provide an Android phone for free on a £20-a-month contract whereas you typically still have to fork out £200 or more for an iPhone on a similar contract.

So what happens next?  This is a highly volatile market with new devices being launched all the time.  The first few months of 2010 has seen the release of many impressive Android phones including Google’s Nexus One, Motorola’s Droid and HTC’s Desire to name just three.  Meanwhile, the Android OS platform continues to be enhanced and the upcoming Android 2.2 release includes a list of exciting new features and (allegedly) dramatic performance improvements of 450 per cent!  I predict we will soon being seeing announcements from most of the aforementioned device manufacturers about new handsets that will be launched to exploit the potential of the new platform.  HTC have got in first with their barnstorming EVO 4G.

All things considered, I think it’s a fairly safe bet that we will continue to see Android gaining market share and providing Apple with some serious competition.  However, Apple will clearly not go down without a fight and the soon to be released iPhone 4G will doubtless renew interest in the iPhone family and may help to slow the pace at which Android grows.  Despite this, Gartner are predicting that the surge in Android’s success is unlikely to stop anytime soon and will ultimately overtake iPhone, Blackberry and Windows Mobile with a 14 per cent share of the global market by 2012.  They may be right, but then again, they may not.  Either way you can be sure it will be fascinating to follow developments over the next couple of years to see just how things pan out.

Watch this space…

Peter Skinner – May 14^th 2010