Nielsen: Android on 40% of US Smartphones, Windows Phone 7 Just 1%
More numbers! This time, Nielsen has come to the bulletin board with their own numbers regarding smartphone operating system market share in the United States. It’s pretty much the same as it has been for a little while now – Android far ahead, iOS still holding a sizable second place lead, RIM hanging in their and Microsoft not doing much of anything.
Specifically, Nielsen professes Android has 40% of the market share. This is up against iOS’ 28% and RIM Blackberry’s 19%. Compare that to Comscore’s projections yesterday of 41.8%, 28%, and 21.7%, respectively.
It seems Nielsen didn’t deem Symbian’s and WebOS’ numbers big enough for their own category as they’ve been lumped into the infamous “other” category. As for Windows, Comscore gave Microsoft 5.7% of the share but didn’t say which versions of Windows accounted for how much of the share.
Nielsen did decide to discern between the two, though, and they show us that Windows Phone 7 only has about 1% of the share and Windows Mobile is still the one keeping Microsoft in the game with 7% of the share.
So there it is – two very similar reports that suggest Android surely is primed for 50% of this country’s share while Microsoft isn’t really moving as many units as they probably wanted to.
Some will say the OS is still young and Android had just as rough a time starting out, but don’t forget that Android came to market as an unknown entity with only one manufacturer supporting it while Microsoft had multiple big names come out with devices based on their history alone.
Not saying Microsoft can’t eventually regain prominence in the smartphone market, but their advantage certainly hasn’t done anything to accelerate adoption. [Nielsen]