By 
The latest research from NPD Group is showing big gains for Android during the first quarter of 2012 at the expense of the mobile operating systems biggest rival. Android, which dipped to 49 percent towards the end of 2011, weathered an iOS surge brought about by the release of the iPhone 4S to reach a dominating 61 percent share of the market. Apple’s iOS saw a drop from a 49 percent share during Q4 2011 to hold less than a third of the market in Q1 2012 at 29 percent.
While various firms will give varying reports on the specific number of Android handset vs. iOS handset, the latest trend points toward Android continuing to grow its hold as the number one smartphone platform. Still, the quick rebound from Apple’s record breaking iPhone 4S sales is something most would not have anticipated.
[via DroidLife]
Lol, from that graph, you can see people flock from Android to the iPhone 4 in
Qtr 4 2011 (when it launched), realize how mediocre it is, then go back to
Android in Qtr1 2012. Good stuff.
That’s NOT what you can see on this graph!
This is US sales per quarter per OS…
So not marketshare in userbase!
You can see that iOS sold more in Q4 then Android’s (because of the launch of the iPhone). And you can see that Android is selling even better then before the iPhone launch ;) (53 ->61% from Q2->Q3, 49->61% from Q4->Q1)
Uh, you might want to read this before you get too excited, my fandroid friend:
“NPD announces that Android surpassed iOS in contradiction with the carriers’ reports”http://www.tech.sc/npd-announces-that-android-surpassed-ios-in-contradiction-with-the-carriers-reports/
Based upon the Big 3 carriers ACTUAL NUMBERS, who combined account for 80% of all smartphone sales in the US, it is mathematically impossible for Android to have a 61% share in the qtr, regardless of the results of NPD’s “survey”. You’ve been had :-)
I’ve been had, eh? lol, I was just making a joke. You neckbeards took it serious. You’re trying too hard ;-).
and 95% of us are running outdated software versions. -_-
I wouldn’t call Gingerbread outdated, just not the latest and greatest. Gingerbread is still far more advanced than any other mobile OS on the market.
Gingerbread is outdated. Your lying to yourself if you think otherwise. Example: The international GS2 is running ICS while my TMO GS2 is still running the now outdated GB.
well sounds to me then that TMO/Samsung is the problem.. not Android itself
Never said Android is the problem. It is definitely the manufacturers and carriers fault that only about a nickel percent of us have been updated.
Outdated how? What exactly is it that Gingerbread can’t do that you’d like it to? I flirted with a few ICS roms on my Evo before settling back into a polished Gingerbread rom. In fact, I appreciated Gingerbread even more after returning to it. Don’t get me wrong, ICS itself is great, it’s just that there were too many things broken on the Evo port for me to keep using it as my daily driver. Gingerbread is and will be fine for me until I upgrade, maybe when the next Nexus arrives.
You guys are getting this all twisted. I love GB and my Gs2 but it is pure fact that Gingerbread is the “old” software version.
Once Windows 8 comes out, Windows 7 will be outdated….
I think people make too much over being a release behind. The only Android version that people probably really needed to upgrade to was Froyo (speed improvements). The other enhancements have usually been cosmetic or little niceties.
ICS was a complete overhaul in basically every way of the entire Android OS. I would say this update is easily the largest to date.
Being a release behind while staying on Gingerbread on a phone that also has ICS in other places is a big deal…
I have ICS on my Transformers (Prime and OG) and Gingerbread on my Sensation 4G,my wife’s MyTouch 4G and my daughter’s Nexus One. You aren’t missing anything with Gingerbread- trust me.
The headline is inaccurate. Android is not “on 61% of US smartphones”. It’s on 51% according to the latest survey.
This 61% refers to the sales for the last quarter. So out of 10 million or whatever smartphones units sold last quarter, 6.1 million were Android. That;s what the 61% means here. It doesn’t refer to the total number of subscribers.
while I’d be happy to say “android is crushing the crap out of iphone” the graph by itself doesn’t even look accurate. There’s a “statistical margin” and then there’s “bad studies”. I’m kinda leaning towards the latter.
I don’t doubt there’s more android phones than iphones being sold, but that’s about the extent of accuracy I could leave things.
Isheep
Yayyy so people aren’t as Apple zombie as I thought!!!!
I think what this report is probably showing is that when something is new is when it has the most sales. Since there are always new Android phones coming out and iPhones are only updated every year (and some change last year), Android bounced right back. Year over year results are probably more accurate than quarter over quarter.
The differences between ICS and Gingerbread are marginal at best. Im running ICS
Depends if you are running AOSP or a different version. Any ICS phone with manufacturer bloat still looks pretty similar *Sense vs ICS Sense, Touchwiz vs ICS Touchwiz, etc). And they kept some features/UI aspects from past builds too, so it isn’t as pure as the AOSP version. Also roms based on AOSP ICS with features people actually want are even better (the best of the best).
So basically Apple had a christmas spike