Apple iPhone facing a rising competitor in Google Android Smartphones

Although Apple iphone iOS is still the leading the smartphone operating system pack, Google’s Android OS has increased its standing to 25% market share. This is according to Quantcast, a data firm in its August report of smartphone operating system market share which also placed Apple’s iOS at 56%.

Recently, Apple reported that it was shipping around 230,000 iOS based gadgets by the day. Apple’s 56% market share of the operating system was boosted thanks to the 1.7 million iPhone 4 handsets they managed to sell in just three days of the phone’s introduction to the market. Despite the recent claim by Steve Jobs, Apple’s Chief that Google included upgrades in their recent claim of selling 200, 000 handsets a day, Google’s Android still managed to trim Apple’s iOS lead and also grab some more market share from Blackberry’s RIM and other key players.

In actual fact, Android began the year at 18.6% OS market share and grew steadily to grab 11.4% from Apple, 1.6% from RIM and a further 5.6% from the other OS providers including Palm’s WebOS and Microsoft Windows Mobile.

With all this fuss about the market share of the different OS providers, who stands to gain most? Is it the provider, custom or the carrier? According to Quantcast, the carrier is the most benefitting party. To grasp this phenomenon, one only need to consider the amount of smartphones sold under big carrier names such as Sprint or Verizon Wireless and mark you, the demand is still upward.

Just recently, Samsung reported that it has sold more than one million Galaxy S Android handsets courtesy of the AT&T, T Mobile and Sprint networks. Samsung predicts that a further 25 million Android units will be sold in the third quarter of 2010 especially via Verizon wireless and Sprint. We now just have to wait and see the next course Android will take in the future.

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