Android Gaining Marketshare Fast, Apple Losing It Slowly

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So if you haven’t heard of the lawsuit Apple has started against HTC (and by proxy Google’s Android OS), here’s a nice summary of the patents Apple has stated HTC is infringing on.

Now, if you were curious as to why Apple started these lawsuits all of a sudden, I have a feeling it might be because Steve Jobs had a copy of the iPhone and Android’s marketshare report from Quantcast.

Now as you can see by this graph, the iPhone is well ahead of it’s closest competition, Android, in marketshare (as determined by web consumption). But what this graph doesn’t show (but the next two do) is that Android is catching up, and fast.

So what do the last two graphs mean? Glad you asked. Well, the first graph shows how quickly Android has passed all the other major competitors in relatively little time (and how much it still has to gain to catch up with the iPhone) and the second one shows how much market share Android has gained over the last month, quarter, and year.

Android has almost doubled it’s market share in the last year and just over the last quarter has shot up significantly. And all this while the iPhone’s marketshare has been slowly dropping.

Now it’s not too say Apple is losing users, in fact, both OS’s seem to be gaining users. The issue for Apple is that Android is just gaining them ALOT faster right now. If the current trends continue (and with more and more Android devices coming out, they just may well), Android looks poised to catch up to Apple and battle it out very soon.

So think it’s a coincidence that Apple sues HTC, the largest Android manufacturer in the world, after data like this comes out?

Either way this seems to be the beginning of a major OS battle between a few giants in the industry.

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  • Marcel

    LOL Apple you suck, the only thing HTC is steeling from them is market shares, be affraid apple be very affraid. maybe they should put their resources into a DIFFRENT model instead of trying to improve old tech with new tricks….BOOOOO Apple

  • For an “internal” view of Android manufacturers quotas and platform distribution, you can also have a look at our first-hand statistical research conducted on 1300 Android devices in 10-days period from Feb 23, 2010 to Mar 3, 2010.
    The research is published at:
    http://home.ameliemedia.com/android-market-share/

  • Random

    Steve Jobs old and weak trying to go after anyone who is trying to hurt his baby….

  • DR

    Very interesting information. The second graph (OS Mobile Web Consumption Trends) is the most informative and basically drives the point of the whole article. But the last chart (Relative Change In Share of Mobile Web) Is extremely misleading and basically useless. The first two plots (Monthly and Quarterly) are way too sensitive to transitory conditions such as the release of new handsets. The last one (Annual) is usually more informative but in the case of very young platforms such as Android it can be ridiculously misleading. For example, if you make the same plot for the month of Oct, 2009, you will see a ridiculously high relative change for Android (in the order of 800%) for the simple fact the OS was released on Oct 21, 2008. Moving further four months to Feb, 2010, doesn’t improve things too much because on Feb, 2009, the platform was still way too young, and far from established. The fact that the iPhone OS had a relative loss of 10.2%, RIM OS a relative gain of 7.5%, and others a loss of 6.9%, is very interesting and very telling because their position in industry is clearly established. But the fact that Android gained 95.3% is completely misleading; if their marketshare in that period had gone from 0.1% to 0.5% the relative increase would have been 500% and yet we would consider the platform and utter failure.

    • DR,

      I wouldn’t call it misleading. Just try to see it for what it is and not read into it.
      It is simply showing how quickly Android has grown over those periods compared to the other OSes that is all. Even if it went from one user to 4 users and showed a 400% increase, and then you saw that it has more users than Blackberry etc at 4 users, it wouldn’t be considered a failure, it would be a huge success if the other OSes only had 2 users, etc.
      Use the graphs in conjunction with each other not as individual reports (hence why they are all in one report).

  • Our company develops apps for both platforms and we have been impressed with the growth rate of Android. However the difference between apples experience and android is like night and day. Android is cheaper for the public but it lacks the quality that you should get in a $400 dollar mobile phones os. Yes there are more Toyota’s sold but it’s hard to beat an Aston Martin.

    • Anonymous

      I’d expect an Aston Martin to perform better than a economy car. Wouldn’t you? That’s clearly not a good analogy.

      The iPhone is like a toy compared to an Android phone. I think comparing it to a diamond encrusted turd might be more a apt description. lol.

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