By If Admob’s statistics are anywhere near accurate, Motorola has gone on a pretty outrageous streak and is absolutely tearing it up in terms of smartphone market share. They can thank Android for that – check out this quote from MocoNews:
“… its report sheds some light on Motorola, which up until recently had an insignificant presence in the smartphone space. In North America, AdMob found that Motorola had the second most popular handset after the iPhone with the Droid receiving 11.3 percent of ad requests in December. What’s more, the Motorola CLIQ was the sixth most popular handset with 3.4 percent of the ad requests.
Still,the iPhone continues to dominate in North America, with the popular Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) device requesting nearly half, or about 48.5 percent of ad requests. AdMob said that most of those requests are generated inside applications, and not in the browser.”
I wonder how long we’ll have to hear that caveat of “Still, the iPhone” blah blah blah. The iPhone isn’t going anywhere – it’ll be around for a long LONG time – but I think it’s days as the #1 platform are numbered. As a single device? Yeah… it might be impossible to top. But such is the nature of open source vs proprietary models.
Either way the outlook for both Motorola Android are pretty darn good.
i doubt the iphone will lose its crown for another decade. my inner phandroid wants to argue, but my logic prevails in the end. the iphone is a well marketed rolling stone. it is well received by the “cuspers” (sp?), generation x, and generation y. most people dont know what an open platform offers, and as long as our friend steve offers them flashing lights on a VERY stable OS, the wont bother to find out.
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just enjoy your android (like linux users enjoy their ubuntu), but dont expect it to top the iphone anytime soon.
Quite frankly I do not want Android to become all pervasive. Part of the charm of Android is that it is quirky and not every second person has it. It gives you kind of an outsider feeling which is rather nice.
One must be mindful of the difference between most used handset and most owned handset. Admob stats aren’t directly measuring marketshare.
It is like when MP3 players dropped. The Ipod wsa the staple MP3 player because that is the name brand that everyone associated with all though there were other mp3 players that were userfriendly and you could down load music from anywhere.
The iPhone will always be number one, but the fact that Motorola has grown in under 4 months is huge. All those that want an option other than apple will get a Motorola or some othe Android operating system phone.
@Brian
That may be true, but it’s hard to deny that the iPhone is also a very popular ‘owned handset’.
It is nice to see a solid Android presence in the mix though.
People should also not forget that “the” iPhone is in fact 3 separate devices.
@kblack
in a sense you are right, but i would rather say it’s three different models/years of the same device.
10 years? In three years there will be more Android phones than iPhones. This is going to end up like PC/Mac again.
I have the feeling that the iPhone’s days are numbered unless they do something AMAZING with their next gen phone. I mean the iPhone is the iPhone and it might add a few features here and there as time goes on. In the end I see it being much like the Apple vs. Microsoft of the last decade. Apple will have their special niche and people will fawn over how great Apple products are, however, Android is posed to become the Microsoft of the next decade, at least in the mobile phone department.
Out of curiosity, if someone is running an App on an iPod Touch, does it show up on this chart as an iPhone ad?
Apple products ARE amazing. The main reason that I am so pro-android is that the iphone os is just so BORING. I have an ipod touch and it is amazing like most Apple products, but the os is just so boring. I also like android because of how it sticks out in public. It is different in a good way.
apple a market leader? wtf?
nokia PWNS apple when it comes to market share
It’s purely a numbers problem for Apple. The iPhone had absolutely no competition for it’s first two years. Zero. It was clearly to finest web browsing phone hands down. But now that that is certainly no longer the case, the numbers are just completely stacked against one phone, one manufacturer, one carrier. There are too many other players and too much money to be made. By the end of this year in the US alone there will probably be 40-50 Android phones on all major carriers, vs one Apple on one beleaguered carrier. Plus it’s also painfully evident that manufacturers are competing against each other to have the slickest Android phone, and multiple new improved Android phones will be appearing every month. No, the iPhone is not going to collapse, it’s sales will probably continue to climb. But with Android’s momentum, I think there’s little question the clear majority of smart phones sold will have little green robots by the end of this year, certainly by 2011.
When is apple going to release a QWERTY Iphone? thats all win for steve jobs=p
@ ArtInvent
My thoughts exactly. although I think 40-50 by years end is on the high side.
I have said it once I’ll say it again. Apple is its worst enemy. Proprietary hardware/software does not win the day, unless you’re the only game in town. That is no longer true.
The openness of the android platform means apple will lose like it lost the computer market in the 80s. Sure apple makes a good device. Sure the ergonomics is superb. Sure they study the human approach to software development. But in the end… One Vs. “Every stinking Android device” means apple loses.
i just don’t really see the iphone going anywhere, since they havent really done anything special with it, like its been pretty much the same iphone since iphone one, i mean big deal the iphone is faster now, but all that does is make your one app open faster. From this point they would have to change it up something, which would put the old iphone to the curb, if they want to stay at the top forever
I believe that companies are taking a close look at the Verizon/Moto comeback using Android. I think there will be more that try this tried and true method. Android + good device + lots of ‘good’ advertising will win marketshare. Also – companies are realizing that to compete with Apple you need an OS with lots of apps/games. That pretty much leaves Android/Palm/Windows. Windows costs money…
@ amargari
My educated guess would be yes. iPod Touches are included in that market share and really should be broken out considering they’re not competing in the smart PHONE market.
My education is based on two sites I follow. The first breaks out Droid from all Androids and are all inclusive for Apple. I correlate this with the second site that breaks out iTouch and iPhone, but is all inclusive of Android.
First site with Droid/Android break out, but all inclusive Apple:
http://getclicky.com/marketshare/us/droid/
Second site with iPhone/iTouch break out (both are US only):
http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_browser-US-weekly-200936-201003
Funny thing is, in the US, the iPhone is showing slippage.
I think the smartphone landscape could get more complex if Microsoft gets its game together and can get a good phone OS + viable app ecosystem out very soon. Developer’s costs, cost of most apps, cost of OS to phone makers, IP rights of all interested parties – these are of course things to consider. Of course, if their rumoured Feb announcement is just more vapourware, then Android’s growth will increase. I think the Google vs China spat may not affect Android that much, because Chinese firms can just strip the Google apps and stuff out of Android. Google, however, as an information business, may be affected.
I think a more interesting stat would be market share by OS…
@methodz actually 40 -50 is about right. I think I read somewhere that Motorola alone is coming out with 20 phone models, even Garmin is jumping in on the android game. but I have to agree with sunny, the charm of android when I first jumped onboard with the G1 was the exclusive/wow factor. I could do things with my phone that no one else could such as streetview, multitasking(b4 the Pre) and instant gmail and calaendar sync. But 2 or 3 years from now when there wouid be over a 100 android phones and everybody and their mother has one it would become quite ordinary.
DROID!
Also not to mention that AT&T is also a culprit here as far as Apple’s market share goes. If/when they start releasing Android devices that will work on their 3G frequencies I’d bet that the iPhone’s dominance will start to dwindle.
“AdMob found that Motorola had the second most popular handset after the iPhone with the Droid receiving 11.3 percent of ad requests in December…”
So HOW does the pie chart show 30%– the droid wasn’t released until November. The numbers look fishy…
All the Mac/PC to iPhone/Android comparisons are wrong. the the difference lies in the use of open standards. The iPhone supports enterprise functionality along with non enterprise functionality. The Mac/PC was not like that – you had the mac doing things ( ie different networking, printer protocols, disk formats etc… ) its way and the rest of the world doing it another way ( ie shit ). The iPhone on the other hand embraces open standards. It will work on any network the chipset supports. Just wait until the iPhone hits another network ( ie verizon )…
The android after many android devices will never be “quite ordinary” . I used to have a G1. When the moto droid came out, I envy the cool and not ordinary droid. Then the nexus one came, I thought it was very cool and very fast so I bought it from google. And I realized I got the coolest android and it is not ordinary. Newer and cooler androids will come and they will not be ordinary. The android improves itself through competition within the android eco-system. What is ordinary is the feeling you get when you used tohave the coolest iphone 3GS and now everybody has the same Iphone (in hardware and software). That is definitely ordinary.
I don’t have an iPhone but I DO have an iTouch. My kids and I use it around the house and have a ton of apps on it. Is that factored into the calculations when they discuss how many ‘iPhones’ are in the wild?
Open standards are not the same as open source. A single developer on a single os / single device and myriad developers on single os multiple devices, I wonder who will produce the most prolific and useful tool? This is a market problem. The market always favors a competitive field. If Apple would have gone open source from the start they could have set the field. Google did. As a result, Android will dominate the smart phone market and soon start to penetrate the desktop/laptop market.
“…Android is posed to become the Microsoft of the next decade, at least in the mobile phone department…”
That makes me throw up in my mouth a little. Not disagreeing, just contemplating the horror of the Vista version of the Android O/S.
Actually, of course, this is a confusion between a phone manufacturer and an O/S platform. What is interesting is that the traditional bully vs underdog roles played by Msoft and Apple are virtually reversed in the phone market where Apple is the established player and the Android platform is the insurgent.
I don’t expect to see Apple’s dominance ending anytime soon. No more than I expect Microsoft to slip into obscurity. As other posters noted, the vast consumer market couldn’t care less about an “open” operating system. As long as Apple continues to deliver a highly stable, integrated hardware/software solution and attracts a legion of developers, it will retain its dominance.
What the Android platform offers, on the other hand, is a base for developing a wide variety of niche devices with specialized functionality. And for those of us who enjoy leading edge technology and don’t mind a little bleeding now and then, it offers the promise of toys that are worth the price.
So this chart measures the amount of advertisements the user is forced to see? Advertising sucks– that’s why I went to cable…
android will take over as soon as peoples eyes are opened to open source…that being said…at&t is goin to release android phones…these wil put a blemish on androids image…they wont adopt google and seek to standardize the app market…basically they will be alternative looking iphones with all the same crappy limitations……android has the potential to take apple out…but its all the players in the android game that will determine if it happens or not…and u will always have the people who are brand loyal and will argue this till the day they die….but i do believe the devices (due to constant competition) will in themselves take the iphone out….open source will always win…just takes people becoming aware of the possibilities….believe it or not there are people out there still that have absolutely no idea what an app is…or that a cell phone can do more than call people….mass ignorance is the android platforms downfall