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Ahead of rumored Verizon iPhone, Apple widens smartphone lead in U.S.

Monday, January 3, 2011 · 8:48 am · 24 Comments

“According to November 2010 data, Apple holds 28.6 percent of the U.S. smartphone market, up slightly from 27.9 percent in October,” Ryan Kim reports for GigaOM.

“BlackBerry OS slipped again in November to 26.1 percent, down from 27.4 percent in October and 33.9 percent in June,” Kim reports. “Android OS, meanwhile, closed the distance on Apple — reaching 25.8 percent in November, compared to 22.7 percent in October and 15 percent in June.”

Kim reports, “While Apple’s marketshare remains stable, Android continues to climb and BlackBerry OS shows no signs of halting its slide. While the overall marketshare puts the three rivals within just a few percentage points of each other, the latest numbers suggest that RIM is struggling to connect with users with its latest BlackBerry 6.0 devices and has a lot of work ahead of it. Android’s fast-paced growth, meanwhile, could put it on track to overtake iOS in the next month or two. But the market picture could also get altered significantly when Apple releases an iPhone on Verizon.”

Full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: As we predicted it would back on June 29, 2010, the expectation of the Verizon iPhone has impacted Android sales. Without such pervasive rumors, Android, with multiple models from a variety of phone assemblers available on all carriers – and very often subject to Buy One Get One Free promos – would be much closer, if not ahead of iPhone’s U.S. market share by now.

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Comment Feed

24 Comments

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ralph from berlin

Monday, January 3, 2011 - 9:07 am · Reply

as much as i would love to follow mdn’s logic here, android’s growth is actually acccelerating from oct to nov. i hope the verizon iphone will be here soon, otherwise there is no way of keeping android from becoming no one soon.
Priused

Monday, January 3, 2011 - 9:09 am · Reply

Do you think that Android sales will drop when Google is forced to change their OS because of copyright infringement issues?
Burrell

Monday, January 3, 2011 - 9:25 am · Reply

Android is set to become the biggest Google info gathering tool used to sell personal info to advertisers that the world has ever seen.

The users don’t seem to care about their privacy.
steve

Monday, January 3, 2011 - 9:25 am · Reply

Buy Android’s wannabe IPhone get the Geimini virus free. 200K Androids already infected, ready to steal your data and take control of your phone and make it a real droid.
Journo

Monday, January 3, 2011 - 9:26 am · Reply

ralph from berlin,

MacDailyNews’ logic is impeccable. Yours is not.

Think seasonality.

MDN is right, Android’s growth has been stunted as the more aware Verizon subscribers decide to wait for the real thing.
mike

Monday, January 3, 2011 - 9:26 am · Reply

“Do you think that Android sales will drop when Google is forced to change their OS because of copyright infringement issues?”

They’re giving the OS away. I think Apple can only go after the OEMs, like HTC, that make $ off Apple’s work.

Android isn’t really making much money. Certainly nothing close to what iPhone is making. Speaks volumes about who’s really “Number One”
Ballmer's left nut

Monday, January 3, 2011 - 9:32 am · Reply

For the mathematically challenged, 1 billion x $0 = $0.

As has so often been commented on Google’s business model is inevitability which to an extent equals market share. The revenue streams and by extension profitability belong to Apple.

When unsustainable fast paced growth reaches a plateau it’ll be musical chairs for the Android vendors. The last one left standing will have to duke it out in the race to the bottom. Apple will garner all the profits which will be reinvested in R&D.

BTW does anyone know what happened to mySpace? Meteoric early growth, diminishing profits, then fell off the edge of the world into an abyss.
Jubei

Monday, January 3, 2011 - 9:46 am · Reply

Android OS sales? As far as I recall the POS wannabe iOS is given away free to wannabe iPhone makers.
Priused

Monday, January 3, 2011 - 9:47 am · Reply

@Mike

Apple makes both the software and the hardware for the iPhone and they have stated that they intend to defend the hundreds of patents that they have for the iPhone. I would assume that they will go after the hardware manufactures like HTC for the hardware patent violations, and they will go after Google for the software patent violations. If successful, the resulting changes would make the Android platform less iPhone like, and therefor less desirable.

In my opinion both HTC and Google have flagrantly ripped off the iPhone IP and should be required to pay licensing fees or stop using.

And by the way… Apple is not the only company suing Google and HTC for ripping off their IP. It is clear to me that Google will eventually be forced to pay licensing fees if they want to continue to provide the Android OS… And when that happens they will be most likely choose to pass on that cost to the hardware providers like HTC. While the cost will probably be nominal (enough to cover licensing fees), it will greatly slow (or put an end to) the buy one get one (BOGO) offers for Android phones.

There are also lawsuits in progress to stop Google from collecting and reselling users personal information. I am less confident about the success of those lawsuits. But if they are successful, or if governments get involved (Some EU countries are currently investigating Google), then Googles motivation to provide and support the Android OS could evaporate, leaving the hardware manufactures in the same position they were a few years ago…
jmmx

Monday, January 3, 2011 - 9:55 am · Reply

@ ralph and journo

MDN’s take is pure speculation. While it does make sense logically, there is nothing in the data to support it one way or the other.

One thing that does appear to be clear is that those of us who predicted that Android would cannibalize RIM and WinMob more than iPhone DO appear to be vindicated.
jmmx

Monday, January 3, 2011 - 10:13 am · Reply

Also – It does seems likely that the Verizon iPhone will put a huge dent in Android growth. One thing that may be even bigger than the iPhone sales themselves, is the following. I have read that that the BOGO offers were done by Verizon, not the manufacturers. Their motivation, obviously, was to sacrifice $ to gain customers.

If iPhone does come to V, then they will no longer have that motivation. So the Android BOGO offers will dry up. That would cut the related sales in half. (Unless ATT institutes them.)

If this is real, we could easily see Android share level reverse itself significantly.

Finally, the Geimini virus/trojan has hit mostly in China and has not been that widely publicized. My guess is that MDN readers are much more familiar with it than the average guy on the street.

However, it does show exactly what the Android critics have been saying all along regarding the susceptibility to this type of attack. As time goes on, it is likely that there will be more of these showing up, and that will have a negative impact on Android sales. And when it does happen, it will take a very long time for them to recover lost trust.
Think

Monday, January 3, 2011 - 10:26 am · Reply

Wasn’t the iPhone supposed to be available on Verizon late December?

So much for that rumor.
Another month to go to dispel the January release.
Then 11 more months to go to really put the rumor to rest.

5 year “exclusive” contract started in 2007.
Ends in 2012.
baldeagle

Monday, January 3, 2011 - 10:41 am · Reply

why is everyone missing the real point of these stats. Apples numbers are relatively flat. Android is going up. So either the market is growing and Apple is maintaining the same percentage of new users or….someone is losing big time market share. It seems more to me that every person whose contract expires on a RIM they are moving to an ios or android but with the flat ios numbers it seems more are chosing android. I would expect a large bump in ios if there are a large number of holdouts waiting for VZN, but it is undeniable that it seems more people right now are moving from RIM to android. Even if you have the greatest product out there the nature of the business of being tied to contract and the number of Apple haters out there will be more than enough to maintain Android numbers with or without BOGO’s
DogGone

Monday, January 3, 2011 - 10:46 am · Reply

The android market share is clearly increasing at a steady pace whereas the iPhone share is increasing only marginally (1% in the last 6 months). So MDN saying the android market share is stalling on this data is just plain wrong.

However we should also consider that the android phones were released only 1-2 years back and is available on all networks. In contrast Apple have already got most of its ATT customers signed up so new growth will need to come primarily from switchers. For Apple growth in the iPhone market is good but they are already making a ton of money from the phones whereas Google miss out of hardware revenue.

Clearly if the iPhone was on other networks it would be a big deal in terms of increased sales. Only the execs at Apple and the networks know if the exclusivity deal is coming to an end. I hope so and I don’t see a downside to do that.
Think

Monday, January 3, 2011 - 11:15 am · Reply

Looked at the chart again. They are using percentages not hard numbers.
It has been reported that the smartphone market is getting bigger quickly. If Apple is staying at 28% each month but the overall market it growing at 10%, then Apple is getting 28% of that 10% growth each month.

It would be nice to know what actual sales numbers were instead of percentages, then you might see everyone’s increase each month.

This chart is deceiving, it appears at first that someone would have to be losing sales for others to gain. But it is a market were “new” sales are rolling in, it makes the chart harder to understand.
Think

Monday, January 3, 2011 - 11:22 am · Reply

Yep, overall smartphone sales are increasing at a ridiculous rate.
2009 saw an increase of 24% over 2008.
Q2 of 2010 saw an increase of 50% over Q2 2009.

So even if Apple stayed at 28% market share, they still added 50% more phones to their sales compared to last years quarter.

Hope this all makes sense to everyone.
Troy

Monday, January 3, 2011 - 11:25 am · Reply

one of the reasons that RIM has not die yet is that most of the blackberries have radio for nextel or boost. I wish we can have an app for having radio from nextel in the iphones
DR V. H.

Monday, January 3, 2011 - 11:30 am · Reply

What percentage of those Android products are total crap? It is not like The iPhone is competing against a single popular alternative when the press reveals those meaningless figures.

I am hearing that some people are swearing off of smart phones and their expensive cellular contracts after their painful Android experience and going back to a dumb phone.
dd

Monday, January 3, 2011 - 11:47 am · Reply

Android continues to gobble up the bottom feeders who think they’re getting some kind of deal.

Apple stays above the fray.

It will be really really interesting to see all the pent up demand for the iPhone released when it comes out on Verizon.
Macaday

Monday, January 3, 2011 - 11:56 am · Reply

@Mike,

Wrong. The Android copyright threat is not the one from Apple to manufacturers, it is the one from Oracle that is directed like a cruise missile at the heart of Google/Android…

It will end in major tears for Google.