Mobile Computing News

Photo: Android

The Google Android mobile OS platform for smartphones has seen healthy growth in market share in the US again, at the expense of Apple, RIM and Microsoft. All in all, though, the entire smartphone market continues to explode.

Google grows, Apple stalls

Analytics firm comScore puts Android market share at 13 per cent for the quarter ending May 2010, representing an impressive 4 per cent growth in market share. Everyone else who is notable has seen their market share drop. RIM fell 0.4 per cent from 42.1 per cent to 41.7 per cent market share. Palm fell 0.6 per cent, dropping from 5.4 per cent to 4.8 per cent. Microsoft’s terminal decline continues, with Windows Mobile dropping a big 1.9 per cent to put the company’s share at 13.2 per cent for the quarter ending May 2010. Even industry darling Apple with its insanely popular iPhone saw its market share dropping a full percentage point from 25.4 per cent to 24.4 per cent.

In perspective

Putting these numbers in perspective, though, the quarter ending May does not include the obvious surge in market share and mind share the recently released iPhone 4 gave Apple, meaning the August numbers should be interesting. Furthermore, the iPhone is a single handset available on a single carrier in North America, while nigh-on everybody develops for Android, meaning for one product line, Apple sure is putting up a fight. What would be interesting to see would be HTC’s handset sales versus Apple’s so we can get a better idea of just how much Google relies on that company.

Finally, Palm and Microsoft are going through something of a transition, with Palm’s webOS soon to be aggressively marketed by its recent acquirer HP, and Microsoft putting the final touches on its long-awaited Windows Phone Series 7, meaning WinMo is likely to stop haemorhaging market share soon.

Those HTC numbers were tell-tale signs

As big a mental victory for the Google Android mobile OS platform as this is, hardware vendors delivering handsets for the platform have seen healthy growth as well. The most notable of these Android handset winners is HTC, who last week posted unbelievable profit and growth numbers for a company of its scale. The Taiwanese mobile phones company has not only made (and achieved) the play of becoming the biggest Google Android vendor, it’s making a play to become colossal in the entire smartphone market, too, and we would never bet against them given this anecdotal evidence.

Windows Phone 7 Series and iPhone 4 will make things very interesting but take nothing away from the Google Android platform. It’s doing incredibly well.