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For the first time since the fourth quarter (Q4) of 2007, RIM fell to second position, as Android took the lead among operating systems in handsets sold to U.S. consumers. NPD’s latest wireless market research reveals that Android accounted for 33 percent of all smartphones purchased in Q2, ahead of RIM (28 percent) and Apple (22 percent).
“For the second consecutive quarter, Android handsets have shown strong but slowing sell-through market share gains among U.S. consumers,” said Ross Rubin, executive director of industry analysis for NPD, in the press release. “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.”
Model selection and promotions continue to play a role in the race for carrier dominance. According to NPD’s Mobile Phone Track, Verizon Wireless has maintained its lead among top carriers for the last three quarters comprising a third (33 percent) of the units sold in the U.S. mobile phone market in Q2, followed by AT&T (25 percent), Sprint (12 percent), and T-Mobile (11 percent). In Q2 Verizon Wireless continued their buy-one-get-one (BOGO) offers on all smartphones, including both RIM and Android models.
In spite of an overall decline in the number of mobile phones purchased year over year, the ongoing popularity of both messaging phones and smartphones, which are generally more costly than standard feature phones, resulted in slightly higher prices for all mobile phones in Q2. The average selling price for all mobile phones reached $90, which is a 3 percent increase since Q2 last year. Smartphone unit prices, by comparison, averaged $143 in Q2 2010, which is a 9 percent decrease over the previous year.
Source: The NPD Group, Inc.
MacDailyNews Note: The information above is from “Mobile Phone Track” – NPD’s consumer tracking of U.S. consumers, aged 18 and older, who reported purchasing a mobile phone. NPD does not track corporate/enterprise mobile phone purchases. It covers calendar second quarter 2010 unit sales. Apple’s iPhone 4 launched on June 24th, seven days prior to the end of the quarter covered by NPD’s report.
MacDailyNews Take: This report will be highly publicized and misused by Apple’s competitors, Android boosters, and anti-Apple pundits. For Android backers, it is the very definition of “delusions of grandeur.”
Good luck in the future in finding a period where extended and extensive leaks of a next-gen iPhone model can be used – excluding corporate sales, of course (please note: AT&T exec: 4 out of 10 of our iPhone sales are to business – May 27, 2010) – to make Android look more successful than Apple’s iPhone in a single carrier-exclusive market.
If we concocted a “report” that excluded the business market to show Apple’s Mac as #1… well, you can imagine. But, we have standards.
So, chances are high that the next iPhone model will not be leaked near the beginning of the quarter preceding its launch, nor it is likely that the iPhone will be exclusively tied to one carrier in the U.S. in any future quarter preceding a new iPhone model. In other words, enjoy your meaningless and heavily-manipulated “victory,” Droidheads. We all know, whether you’ll admit it or not, that you really want an iPhone, not a cobbled together, potential Apple IP-infringing wannabe with less than 1/3rd the apps (which are often of lesser quality), a meager third-party accessory market, no built-in iPod, no iTunes Store capability (music, movies, TV shows, podcasts, books, iTunes U, etc.), no FaceTime video calling ability, and a blurry and inaccurate touchscreen.
Face it: Android will be more widely adopted than iOS. Doesn’t mean it’s better, but it’s going to happen, if it hasn’t already. How can it NOT have wider adoption? Apple is on only once carrier nationally and can’t keep up with demand; they screwed the pooch by not hooking up with Verizon when they had the chance. iOS will almost certainly remain the superior mobile OS, but not the most widely used. . . deal with it.
GM sells more cars than Porsche.
@Grigori
Apple tried to get with Verizon but was turned down because Verizon wouldn’t relinquish control of certain things to Apple. Get your facts straight next time.
Quick get a smart phone count before those iPhone 4’s have a full quarter to be counted. And run those questions past the people going into those Verizon stores to get a fully unbiased opinion.
Oh, and print it out like it is real data about the iPhone killers. Also, look for the article and photos about the missing link. You know, Big Foot. I think he is the CEO at Microsoft.
@Jersey
You sir are AMAZING!
I laughed so hard I spilled my coffee
you owe me a coffee
+1
A better statistic would be bandwidth usage, ad hits, and apps sold, among other things. Maybe the third-party aftermarket in accessories, how many $$ were spent there? How about net profits for the phone builders? For the phone makers and the carriers…? Verizon is giving away everything it can on the front end, locking users in with stiff cancelation fees… all to build up Android’s perceived market share. Problem is, there is no consistency in Android hardware, and when given the chance, especially after using some of the really poor examples of smart phones out there running Android, many of these same people will happily switch to iPhone down the road… Original is better, and derivative imitator is always second best… that’s just the way it has always been.
Again with the Verizon phone…! This is why the antennagate scandal blew up in the first place: people write whatever they want and those who read it take it as if it is true.
Verizon (or any other carrier in US) CANNOT get the iPhone before 5-year contract expires. Bloggers are now all talking about the next iPhone being on other carriers, but unless iPhone 5 gets released in 2012, when the 5-year AT&T deal is set to expire, there will be NO end to exclusivity with the next iPhone.
Another very popular blogger fantasy is that if Verizon had an iPhone now, the sales would be significantly higher. They would NOT. Research, surveys and studies have been done on this. The number of people who want an iPhone but NOT on AT&T is NEGLIGIBLE. Google it up. It’s out there, and it’s been consistent ever since the iPhone came out three years ago.
Apple simply can’t make iPhones fast enough. They are still selling every one they make, even though they are all on AT&T. Right now, the limitation is NOT AT&T. It is the rate at which iPhones are being churned out from FoxConn.
@Grigori
iPhones will outsell droids 10 to 1 in Europe. In a month tmobile will sell the iPhone in the USA. VZ churn is hurting. If apple can up supply, VZ will bleed to the point they will beg their friends in the senate to put pressure on apple.
It may take 3 months for the picture to become clear, but it will happen. Enjoy your delusions.
It’s ironic how the Apple/ATT exclusivity laid the groundwork for the smartphone explosion that allowed Android to flourish, yet Android flourishes because it is sold in spaces where the iPhone can’t compete due to the Apple/ATT exclusivity. Fsckin’ crazy, it is.
You mean they sold more Android phones this quarter than apple sold between lunchtime and 3pm today???!!! OMG!!! Shut it down and give the money back…
At worst all this says is google does microsoft better than microsoft does.
I’m sure after the iPh4 numbers are added we will see a new surge in Apple users. And when iPhones ever goes multi-carrier, the make-believe copies will be giving up substantial share.
Can’t wait to see the results of the HTC patent suit.
Everyone missed the point.
MDN has STANDARDS?!
Why do you publish reports like this?
hmmm, from my very informal survey of family at the last family gathering:
New cell phones: 4, All of them were iPhone 4, and none of them had owned an iPhone before.
1) My sister-in-law, iPhone 4: She actually waited in line on the first day! This is her second Apple product (iPod). (She is 54 btw!). I have never waited on an Apple launch, I guess I am more patient, however, I told her I wish I had known, as I would have waited with her…instead I got my iP4 in the mail the next day.
2) My brother-in-law, senior VP in an F500 tech company: This was a part of a corporate purchase, almost his entire sales division went over to iPhone 4 (several hundred phones?) from Blackberries, he indicates they had choices, and almost everyone chose the iP4.
3) My college daughter: She is so psyched about her new iPhone 4! She almost gave the Apple sales guy a hug when he set it up for her…of course, now her younger siblings are jealous, big time.
4) My nephew: who, like my daughter, indicates that many of their college-mates are getting, or already have iPhones, or iP4s.
Even if it is or becomes true, it doesn’t matter. The iPhone’s margins destroy any of these manufacturer’s offerings, so while other phonemakers are chasing market sharein a race to the bottom with their “buy-one, get ones”, the iPhone keeps printing money.
You’d think these dipshits would learn something from Microsoft.
Units x margins = profit.
… he made some good, significant, mostly valid points. The closest he came to being “wrong” was in suggesting that Apple refused to make a deal with Verizon. And even THAT is true – if you consider Verizon might have made the deal if Apple had relented on a couple of its bargaining points.
Comparing “use” is NOT a valid measure of which phones are on the rise. That’s a measure of who does more surfing. Not the same.
As Grigori said: “iOS will almost certainly remain the superior mobile OS” … and among the more profitable, to boot! But, perhaps not the biggest seller. This is important how? If Apple makes the best products and the most profit, who the frak cares about who racked up the most sales?
@ Grigori,
This time next year, with all exclusive contracts over, worldwide, and CDMA iPhones on the menu in China and America, as well, government bureaucrats everywhere will be mentioning Apple iPhone and Monopoly in the same sentence.
Enjoy your Fandroid lies while you can.
“Face it: Android will be more widely adopted than iOS.”
Android doesn’t even exist as a platform. People talk about it like it’s one single thing, but it’s actually a fractured mess of many different platforms under the same tenuous banner.
Multiple versions. Multiple versions of multiple versions custom tailored to specific smartphone models. Rampant cross-version incompatibilities with eachother.
Until a specific Android(1.5? 1.6? 2.0? 2.1? 3.0? etc.) becomes more widely adopted than iOS or just approaches being *as* adopted, Google won’t even kind of have anything serious to brag about.
Although that sure won’t stop them from trying.
Why so iPhone defensive? This story was not about iPhone falling to third place in NPD survey, that happened three months ago.
http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/25168/
The current story was about Android surpassing RIM to first place in NPD Mobile Phone Track survey.
Q1: RIM, Android, iPhone
Q2: Android, RIM, iPhone
So I don’t quite follow MDN take about “extended and extensive leaks of a next-gen iPhone model in Q2”. Please explain how iPhone leaks will make Android surpass RIM, because I don’t get it.
If it’s going to be “Android” (the OS not the phone) versus anything, it should be compared to all devices that use “iOS” (aka “iPhone OS” since we are counting devices before the name change). Then, you would be including iPod touches and iPads.
OR, you can compare each of the multitude of competing Android-based phones separately versus iPhone. OR you can compare each smartphone maker separately versus Apple in overall smartphone sales.
This is like the usual Mac versus “the rest of the industry using Windows” comparisons. Apple does not need 50.1% market share to be #1 in PCs. Apple just needs about 25% to be #1 in PCs, because Apple is competing against HP, Dell, Toshiba, Acer, etc., and NOT Microsoft. In the same way for smart phones, Apple’s competition is HTC, RIM, Motorola, Nokia, etc., and NOT Google.
Obviously, Android usage will continue to grow because it is the only viable choice for hardware makers who don’t have an in-house smartphone OS. Apple can’t possibly make enough iPhones to supply one to every person who wants one. They are selling every iPhone 4 they make as soon as it is made, even with just one U.S. wireless carrier, with waiting lists to get one everywhere. You can’t sell something faster than you can make it. People need smart phones, so Android-based phones are selling to fill the need.
Interestingly, the release of Windows Phone 7 will provide a second choice for those hardware makers. Assuming it is “good enough” to be usable, Windows Phone 7 is likely to impact overall Android usage much more than Apple’s iPhone.
Let’s face it, Android beat iPhone fair and square, that’s no reason to get all fuzzy about it, Apple just needs to do a better job in the future, that’s all.
“Apple can’t possibly make enough iPhones to supply one to every person who wants one. They are selling every iPhone 4 they make as soon as it is made, even with just one U.S. wireless carrier, with waiting lists to get one everywhere. You can’t sell something faster than you can make it. People need smart phones, so Android-based phones are selling to fill the need.”
That’s BULL and you know it, if somebody want’s an iPhone he/she can get one with maybe a few weeks wait (if even that). Do you really think somebody is gonna buy some crappy Android phone because they can’t wait a while to get an iPhone?? Ohh please….get a clue.
The iPhone is ONE phone- Android phones are MANY phones- why wouldn’t they sell more? And who cares? NONE of these Android “thingys” would exist if it wasn’t for iPhone- which leads me to what I’ve been asking since 2007- WHERE ARE THE LAWSUITS!
Where’s the “We’ve filed for over 200 patents on iPhone and we intend to protect em” action? There would be no multi-touch, app store, software keyboard, proximity sensors, etc. on any of these other phones if it wasn’t for iPhone. This is confess- I don’t get.
In my opinion Android will certainly spread quickly because Google has turned an average operating system into the whore of the mobile market. They should get the rights to Tina Turner’s Private Dancer to use in advertising. Apple would never attach their name to a product that anyone off the street could use and abuse as they see fit.
@ @ken1w
> Do you really think somebody is gonna buy some crappy Android phone because they can’t wait a while to get an iPhone??
Yes. Because many (probably MOST) customers are not tech nerds, like the people who read MDN and other tech-related web sites every day. To that group of smartphone customers, an iPhone is a type of smartphone and an Android phone is another type of smartphone and a Blackberry is another type of smartphone. If they walk into an ATT store because they are looking to buy a smartphone today, and there is a three-week wait for an iPhone, but you can get this other smartphone today, and if the salesperson has decent skills at making a sale, they are likely to buy that other smartphone. If that customer had walked into a Verizon store (or any non-ATT store), iPhone would not even be an option, and a decent salesperson would make a sale (not tell them they need to go to ATT to get an iPhone).
If Apple could make an infinite number of iPhones at an infinite rate of production, there would be no ongoing waiting lists. It would make sense for Apple to offer iPhone from multiple carriers in the U.S. because that would allow iPhone to be prominently displayed in front of every customer who would possibly want one, and give those salespersons more chances to sell an iPhone. And Apple would sell a lot more iPhones. But in the real world, Apple can only sell as many iPhones as they can make, and there are ongoing waiting lists using just one U.S. wireless carrier. Android phones are filling the need that Apple cannot supply by itself, because while Apple may want people to get on a multi-week waiting list for an iPhone, the wireless companies and their salespersons are motivated to “make a sale.”