Android Becomes Number One in U.S. Smartphone Market Share | Hacker News Reader

Android Becomes Number One in U.S. Smartphone Market Share

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57 pointslotusleaf198720 comments

Wow. I'm surprised that WP7 has 10%. I still haven't seen one in the wild except in the hands of developers.

It includes the predecessor Windows Mobile 6.5, which is probably most of that bar at the moment.

WP7 is under-rated. I've seen more than a few in non-developer hands.

The only people I saw with a WP7 (3 of them in total) got theirs because it came with a free XBOX 360 at purchase.

If this is any indication it could imply that people with WP7 are not attached to the platform like iOS or Android users are.

Alternatively, it could be because WP7 is mostly focused on the U.S. and therefore has the weird two-year-contract-stagger effect going on. Couple that with the mass appeal of the iPhone and the ubiquity of Android on lower-end phones (remember, WP7 focuses on the high-end).

Just a point of reference, this is a chart from November:

http://www.linuxfordevices.com/images/stories/chitika_androi...

At that point probably close to 70% of all Android phones as measured by website traffic where clearly in the high end (Incredibles, Evo, Droid, Droid X, Droid 2, etc...).

If Android is dominating, it's doing from the top-down.

Or, perhaps they are attached to a platform: WP7 has some features for Xbox Live integration, which some groups (15-25 year old males I imagine) will find appealing.

I think it is under-rated as well, and I'll buy one as soon as they get one on Verizon.

But I still don't know any non-developers that have one, and only a few of those.

Under rated? I've toyed around with one. It's horribly confusing to use. Kudos for trying a new interface though.

It includes Windows Mobile 6 phones. This is total user base share not quarterly market share. WP7 has much less than that.

I wonder how accurate this is given that we don't know what effect the Verizon iPhone has had?

Why the downvotes? Is it unreasonable to question analysts reports now?

It's unreasonable to expect reasonable behavior in a HN thread about Android or iOS.

I enjoy reading the occasional iOS/Android thread on HN - it's perversely interesting to watch otherwise intelligent people engage in name calling, personal attacks, and the sort of fanboy-type behavior you'd normally see on Engadget or Gizmodo. Human tribal instinct can be entertaining to watch :-)

I haven't seen any numbers reported on the Verizon iPhone, which I think hints at the impact being minimal (if you sell a lot, you talk about it).

They have said it was the best selling product in their history. That implies that it was at least as good as the droid or the htc incredible.

That kind of volume might well be worth a couple of percentage points.

Ah, a quick google turns up a lot of references to that, I had missed it. I took the lack of lines on launch day to mean it didn't break any records, but I guess that's not the case.

I'd guess this is reasonably accurate up to Jan 2011, given that most analyst companies agree within a few percentage on the market share of the various platforms.

I think most people expect Verizon to give the iPhone a boost for this quarter, and then the next quarter it to drop back some while people wait for the iPhone 5.

Android should get a boost from all the new dual-core handsets, so I think they would hope to hold market share.

I don't know what RIM has to hope for. More enterprise sales I guess?

Er... why is it that developers for Android apps are making less? I would think that having a larger market share, chances is that we will make more from our Android apps.

Impossible on the face of it. Android is not a smart phone.

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