iPhone 4 and Android – number 1 in their sectors!

I am sure we can all agree that the smartphone industry has exploded in the last couple of years, but after all of the gadgets that came out and caught on, which one of them can be crowned the top smartphone, and which operating system is preferred over the rest?

The NPD Group helped us out with this little dilemma. According to them, throughout the smartphone market in the US, Android’s presence has increased by 11 percentage points, and during the third quarter of 2010, Android swooshed past Apple’s iOS and RIM’s Blackberry OS, without even looking back. In this period, Android was installed on 44% of all of the smartphones in the OS, this representing the 11 points grow from the second quarter of 2010.

During Android’s growth, Apple merely won a point in the market, to a 23 percent market share hold, while RIM’s Blackberry OS lost 6 points, from 28 to 22 percent. If we look to the year 2009, we will se the brutal fall of Apple’s shares by 21 percent, and the even worse one of RIM’s shares by 53 percent All of these percentages might be kind of confusing, but the basic idea is: Android kicked the competition to the curve.

The really astonishing fact is that despite those numbers, and Apple’s loss in the OS market, iPhone 4 is still the top smartphone sold. The second place at this category was taken by the Blackberry Curve 8500 series, followed by LG Cosmos, Motorola Droid X, and the HTC EVO 4G. Ross Rubin, executive director of industry analysi for NPD said that much of Android’s growth happened at the expense of RIM rather than Apple, while smartphones like HTC EVO 4G, the Motorola Droid X, and other Android powered devices have gained momentum, taking a chunk of RIM’s market, from it’s usually loyal carriers. Bottom line is: iPhone 4 is the most sold handheld device, and Android is the preferred OS. I don’t even want to think what would happen if these champions might one day undertake a project together.