Nielsen Numbers Show Smartphone Market Tilting Android's Way

April 26, 2011 at 5:05 am PT

The mercurial U.S. smartphone market has a new favorite and it’s not the iPhone.

It’s Android, which is now the leading smartphone OS in the States in market share, according to a survey released this morning by Nielsen.

As of March 2011, 37 percent of smartphone users own an Android device, said Nielsen–significantly more than the 27 percent who own an iPhone and the 22 percent who own a BlackBerry.

That’s quite a shift from last October, when 27.9 percent owned an iPhone, 27.4 percent a BlackBerry and 22.7 percent an Android device. But evidently there’s a new trend in smartphone buying intent and it favors Android.

Nielsen’s latest figures show 31.1 percent of consumers planning to purchase a new smartphone leaning towards an Android device, up from 25.5 percent last fall. Meanwhile, 30 percent intend to buy an iPhone–down from 32.7 percent last fall–and 10.5 percent want a BlackBerry, down from 12.6 percent. As the research house notes, that shift in preference is already translating into sales. Half of those surveyed in March 2011 who purchased a smartphone in the previous six months said they bought an Android device.

Tagged with: Android, Apple, Blackberry, digital, Google, hardware, iOS, iPhone, John Paczkowski, Nielsen, Research In Motion, RIM, smartphone

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http://pulse.yahoo.com/_LISU5ZHHTP5Z6G44RQZMDM6MWQ Okli

“OMG all this Android killers are coming” OMG…. HELP… YA, right… help all those AndroidOS hardware manufacturers …
I agree … they are killers:
mean HTC’s i-Killers- will kill Samsung’s i-Killers -will kill Motorola’s i-Killers
a HUGE i-Killer BUBBLE

All the AndroidOS devises compete for the same customer: Apple Hater !!!
although their’s rows are growing its not enough to make MONEY for Hardware Manufacturers
Their’s biggest thread is the growing competition in this segment, which will destroy margins and make them broke on loses…
we will see Motorola go for Chapter 11 soon… you will remember my words… TELL YA
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=830875031 Jeffrey Knee

Android is merely repeating the PC netbook pattern. They’re making the training wheels for first time smartphone buyers before they graduate to iPhones later. In meantime the various Android phone makers will bottom-feed themselves to death, just like Acer did with netbooks.
Anonymous

If we are measuring how many future/present buyers are leaning toward Android DEVICES why are we NOT measuring the the leaning toward Apple IOS DEVICES like iPod Touch & iPad?

Oh, I know we could BS about the popularity of Android over Apple. Could it be that there are more IOS DEVICES than Android DEVICES?

Naw, that would be comparing Apples to Apples.

Ayuh
Anonymous

Google and its partners really need to find a way to make Android more profitable. RIM’s been slipping for years, yet even they are more profitable than all the Android OEMs combined. Meanwhile, the iPhone alone generates more revenue and profit than Google’s entire business, and makes more than $3 in profit for every dollar Android OEMs make (and that’s not including iPod Touch or iPad profits).
http://www.facebook.com/people/Lig-Riv/100000846401146 Lig Riv

Dude, repeat after me:
“This is an article about the SMARTPHONE market. This is an article about the SMARTPHONE market. As in, PHONES.”

Don’t worry, Apple is still safe and sound without your anonymous support. It’s the most successful OEM. It’s just no longer the most popular smartphone OS maker – but don’t worry, you can still brag about it being the most profitable.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Lig-Riv/100000846401146 Lig Riv

Oh yes:
http://www.reuters.com/article.....GE20110408
http://www.smartmobix.com/Moto.....martphones
etc.
Just wait, they’ll go bankrupt… any second now….
http://twitter.com/rcastano rcastano

Android being free makes the smartphone a commodity. Anybody can make a smartphone/tablet now and load it with free software. There is no differentiation. The Android manufacturers are now in a perfect market (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_market).

According to economists, in a perfect market, the only manufacturers that will make any money are the low cost manufacturers. At the end of the day there will not be any profits for anyone on the manufacturing side. The lowest price setter will make the sale and the asian manufacturers will kill american/european brands.

This is just a concept. I think Apple will keep the lion share of the high end market and that is good. Hopefully RIM and HP can retain some market share too. If Android prevails like Windows did in the 80s, that will be the end of innovation until someone can differentiate itself from Android. And that is not good.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Martin-Hill/717947739 Martin Hill

Actually, he can also brag about iOS being the biggest OS platform too, 59% bigger than Android in the USA and 116% bigger in Europe.

The thing is the only reason to group devices by OS is to compare app platforms or advertising platforms. If you do that then you have to include all devices running those OSes.

If you’re only comparing smartphones, then you should only be comparing Samsung, HTC, Moto etc individually against Apple and RIM.

-Mart
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_E6TNU3ZQAA2D7I73PEVEIG7DLU pierrette

Outstanding this is truly a family of “Fanboys”.
http://blog.macb.net macbeach

I’m glad that me and JohnDoey no longer have to start these comment wars. Better to just sit back and watch the fireworks.

Religion is alive and well in the world. Its just not happening in churches any more.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_7PSYIBYSL3IERNYK7I5R5KXBHI Ryan

Ok.

How about the $6 Billion in profits Apple made last quarter?

How’s catching up to that???
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_7PSYIBYSL3IERNYK7I5R5KXBHI Ryan

Apple’s list of growing victims:

1) Borders(sad, but true)
2) Amazon(will die a slow death)
3) Zune(dead years ago)
4) Motorola Mobility(wait til thisThursday when the bottom drops out)
5) Acer (CEO fired early)
6) HTC(via lawsuit)
7)Dell(again, will die a slow death)
8)Kodak(all three lawyers that work for them)
9) Adobe(who’s learning to adopt)
10) Windows CE Phones(or whatever they were called)
11) Palm
12) HP(yes, they’ll start falling apart soon too)
Anonymous

Anyone who feels good about Android after seeing this simply doesn’t know what is going on the industry.

Market share does not matter. Too many phones are given away for free, and even sold at a loss. There was a quarter where LG shipped 100 million phones and lost $100 million dollars. In other words, they paid every one of their users $1 to take their phone. That same quarter, Apple made billions in profit by selling about 10 million phones. They made hundreds of dollars per phone.

Market share traditionally is an indicator of profitability, and in computers, of developer support. But Apple has never had the most market share, and yet they have more than 50% of all the profits across all mobile phones, more than everyone else in the industry combined, and they have more than 50% of the developer support, more than 50% of app downloads, more than 50% of app revenues. Again, more than everyone else combined. Apple has such utter dominance over the mobile industry there is absolutely no way to spin a grim story about them. Just imagine 2 pies … Apple takes one pie for themselves, then eats a piece of the other, and what is left in that other pie is divided up amongst everyone else. In a very real sense, Apple *is* the phone industry. Everybody else is in Apple’s shadow. There isn’t a single phone making company or mobile unit that Apple couldn’t buy with cash.

What is even worse for Android, since it is an advertising platform, is that Google makes more money off each iPhone user than they do off each Android user. In other words, iPhone is the best Google advertising platform also!

What is happening with Android is 2 things: feature phone makers are replacing their feature phones with low-end smartphones running Android; and feature phone buyers are replacing their feature phones with low-end smartphones running Android. This is good for both those phone makers and phone users, because feature phones suck. Even in a free phone, you should get a real Web browser today. So everybody wins. Even Apple wins, because those Android phone users are more likely to buy iPhone next time out than feature phone users. But you are going to see Android sell in feature phone -like numbers, and it’s as meaningless as far as profits or developer support as the huge numbers of feature phones Nokia ships every quarter.

Nokia even has more app revenues than Android! So does RIM! So the idea that Android market share translates into actual success is just crazy.

Nielsen Numbers Show Smartphone Market Tilting Android's Way

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