∞ New report puts Apple's iPhone OS ahead of Android

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There was a lot of talk earlier this week about an NPD report that put Apple’s iPhone OS behind Google’s Android in terms of market share. However, a new report by market research firm Gartner says Apple is winning the race.

The IDC report places the iPhone OS in third place with 15.4 percent market share in the first quarter of 2010. This is up from the same period last year where Apple had a 10.5 percent market share.

Google’s Android grew from a 1.6 percent market share in 2009 to 9.6 percent in the first quarter of 2010.

Nokia’s Symbian OS and RIM were number 1 and 2 with 44.3 percent and 19.4 percent market share, respectively.

“To compete in such a crowded market, manufacturers need to tightly integrate hardware, user interface, and cloud and social networking services if their solutions are to appeal to users,” Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner.

Update: Clarified that the new report came from Gartner, not IDC. 7:49 am


  • Scott!

    Excellent — but I'm a little confused after reading the article, and there's no link to the original to check the figures. The numbers for Android are listed as a percentage for 2009, but unit sales for 2010. Everything else in the article is listed as percentages, so there's no way to actually see where Android sales fall in relation to the others! Or maybe it's too early in the morning and I'm just missing something — very possible!

  • http://intensedebate.com/people/jdalrymple Jim Dalrymple

    Scott, I messed up the wording for the Google numbers, but that's fixed now. The link to the original report is in the first paragraph.

  • Grapho

    Once you take out the buy one get one free deal out of the equation, the numbers even out in favor of Apple. If Apple was to give iPhones for free, I am sure they could have 100% market share.

  • http://twitter.com/chipotlecoyote @chipotlecoyote

    The iPhone OS market share grew by 46%, but Android's grew by 600%. Whether or not that's being accomplished by giving away phones as Grapho suggests, that's still pretty remarkable.

    One quibble, though — "winning the race?" Really? I think we (and I can include myself here) tend to conveniently ignore that we're talking about a fight for third place and probably will be for some time to come. Blackberry is *very* entrenched in places that both Apple and Google are going to find it hard to dislodge it from . And despite the fact that Nokia keeps being treated as if it's entirely irrelevant to the conversation, it's worth noting that according to those numbers above Symbian's market share is greater than Blackberry, iPhone OS and Android combined.