Android Sales Outpacing iPhone Sales

Android based Smart­phone sales have recent­ly under­gone sig­nif­i­cant accel­er­at­ed growth, despite the Google devel­oped OS being over two years old, and accord­ing to a recent Nielsen study, for the first time ever, out­paced iPhone sales over a rolling six month period.

The study demon­strates that as recent as Q4’09, Android OS only rep­re­sent­ed about 6% of all new Smart­phone sales, but has jumped to its cur­rent 27% of all smart­phone sub­scribers, sur­pass­ing Apple iPhone OS (23%) and Microsoft Win­dows Mobile (11%).  The 1^st place tro­phy still goes to RIM’s Black­Ber­ry OS, which despite a steady decline, still rep­re­sents 33% of all new smart­phone sales.

The study also high­lights the strength of brand loy­al­ty.  When Nielsen asked a pool of over 2000 indi­vid­u­als which smart­phone they were like­ly to pur­chase next, 71% of Android own­ers said they would stay with their plat­form, a stag­ger­ing 89% of iPhone own­ers would only pur­chase anoth­er iPhone, and only 42% of Black­Ber­ry own­ers would con­sid­er buy­ing anoth­er, with 50% con­sid­er­ing either an iPhone or Android as their next phone.

Research in Motion unveiled the rel­a­tive­ly unim­pres­sive Black­Ber­ry 6 OS just ear­li­er this week.  “New” fea­tures are ideas that seem to have been bor­rowed by phones that have had them now for years, such as two fin­ger pinch to zoom brows­er func­tion­al­i­ty, uni­ver­sal search, and mul­ti­ple brows­er tabs.  In my opin­ion, this is going to have rel­a­tive­ly lit­tle effect in what seems to be a trend­ing pat­tern of declin­ing sales and mar­ket share.  I’m a die-hard fan of Black­Ber­ry brand­ed prod­ucts, and have used every­thing from the iPhone to the Google Nexus and have not been hap­pi­er than with my Black­ber­ry Bold.  But as a wave of new phones keep appear­ing before me, I can no longer let my fan­boy sta­tus dri­ve me into imprac­ti­cal­i­ty, where a world of faster and more pow­er­ful phones exist all around me.  Apple and now Android, have proven to be wor­thy con­tenders in an extreme­ly com­pet­i­tive mar­ket, where mobile users like myself, are becom­ing increas­ing­ly demand­ing of smart­phone fea­tures and their selec­tion of mobile appli­ca­tions.

The above research is the evi­dence of the grow­ing demand for iPhone and android app devel­op­ers in the U.S.