Android Is Either “Winning” Because Apple Is Letting It, Or Losing

In September 2010, I wrote a post that ignited an absolute shitstorm around these parts. “Shitstorm” in this case meaning a post with a thousand comments, the majority of which were spewed up by rabid Android fanatics. The title of that post:

Is Android Surging Only Because Apple Is Letting It?

At the time, we were in the midst of a massive Android surge to the top of the smartphone ecosystem food chain. This was happening all around the world, but the focus of this particular post was the U.S. market. Based on some comments made by developer David Beach at the time, I wondered if, as the title suggested, Android was only doing so well in the U.S. because the iPhone was still only available on one carrier, AT&T?

It’s time to revisit that thought because there’s now absolutely no question that this was the case. There’s now data to back it up. What’s more, despite what some surveys suggest, this trend may have fully reversed itself.

Over the past few days, both comScore and NPD have put out data showing that Android still has a healthy hold on the U.S. smartphone market with their best market share numbers yet. According to comScore, Android controls 51 percent of the market. According to NPD, it’s more like 61 percent.

For comparison, Apple is the number two player with 30.7 percent of the market according to comScore, and 29 percent according to NPD.

On the surface, there’s one big glaring problem with these numbers. Actual sales data from the three largest carriers in the U.S. doesn’t seem to back up the comScore and NPD numbers. At all.

In the last quarter, the iPhone accounted for 78 percent of all smartphones sold through AT&T. On Verizon, the iPhone accounted for 51 percent of all smartphones sold. Sprint didn’t report their total smartphone sales numbers, only iPhone sales numbers, but estimates peg the iPhone percentage around 60 percent. The iPhone is not (yet) sold on the nation’s fourth largest carrier, T-Mobile.

That’s 51 percent of all smartphones sold on the nation’s largest carrier (Verizon). 78 percent of all smartphone sold on the nation’s number two carrier (AT&T). And 60 percent of all smartphones sold on the nation’s number three carrier (Sprint). Jay Yarow of Business Insider did the math: all together, the iPhone accounted for 63 percent of the smartphone sales in the past quarter on the big three carriers.