Fans of Google’s Android mobile phone operating system have a lot to cheer about, as the NPD just announced that in the United States, Android devices outsold Apple’s iPhone and Research in Motion’s (RIM) Blackberry phones for the first time ever. The race had been largely between Apple and RIM with RIM still in the top spot, but Android’s had the wind under its wings in the last few months with several strong devices launching across multiple carriers from multiple hardware manufacturers.
Here’s a little snippet lifted from PC Mag, who covered the story:
During the second quarter, about 33 percent of new smartphone purchases were for Android-based phones, compared to 28 percent for BlackBerry, and 22 percent for Apple’s iPhone.
“For the second consecutive quarter, Android handsets have shown strong but slowing sell-through market share gains among U.S. consumers,” Ross Rubin, executive director of industry analysis for NPD, said in a statement. “While the Google-developed OS took market share from RIM, Apple’s iOS saw a small gain this quarter on the strength of the iPhone 4 launch.”
The most popular Android phones were the Motorola Droid, the HTC Droid Incredible, the HTC EVO 4G, the HTC Hero, and the HTC Droid Eris.
A number of folks *coughcoughMASHABLEcoughcough* are incorrectly headlining this news as “Android is number one now,” which is only true if you apply the conditions of sales during Q2 2010 and sales in the United States only – it’s important to note that in the rest of the world, the battle is really a three-way between the ever-dominant Nokia and their Symbian OS which has never really caught on in the US and Canada and two upstarts named RIM and Apple.
Even in the United States more broadly and outside of Q2 2010, RIM is still on top and Apple is still number 2, but Android is making a very strong showing – and the longer Apple remains locked in to a single carrier (one that no one likes, at that), the worse off they’ll be.