Android retains US market share crown despite strong iPhone showing

Despite the pent up demand in the US for Apple's iPhone, resulting from its later than usual release, the iDevice fell short of the numbers achieved by its competitor OS, Android. That poorer than anticipated result is somewhat of a surprise cosidering the US is Apple's spiritual home and the brand does disproportionately well there, whereas in the UK, the iPhone range actually outsold all Android phones combined at launch.

Nielsen reports that Apple's smartphone offering only missed equaling the Android share by 2.4%, the closest quarterly result since Android overtook the iOS smartphone in sales last year. The closeness of the result has had various bloggers and tech pundits posit that Apple is catching up to its rival, although that's not possible until the iPhone again sells more than the Android powered smartphones and so far that hasn't happened.

And of course, this tight contest is US only, the iPhone losing share during the same Q4 period in other world markets. But that hasn't prevented the Apple blogosphere from anticipating a trend reversal, Android's slide into doom apparently practically guaranteed. It's a glimmer of hope to the iFaithful and even though the 'perfect storm' - of pent up demand, the proximity to the holiday season, availability on new carriers, new markets, the iPhone 4S being a world phone and so on - has been widely seen as just a one-off 'super quarter', the fanbase is confident that Android's dominance is over.

While it's too soon to confirm or otherwise a sea change in the smartphone wars, Q1's results will be a rather more reliable guide to the fortunes of the combatants. One thing we can be certain of though, is that Android daily activations have exceeded one million, basically doubling since July 2011. Will Apple report its activation figures tomorrow? Quite likely - even if they don't quite match Android's. They need the good news to keep their share price up.

Source: Nielsen