Nielsen: iPhone is kicking Android’s ass in marketshare

Apple’s iPhone OS is dominating Google’s Android OS in U.S. marketshare by a measure of more than three to one, according to newly published Nielsen statistics. The news will come as no surprise to anyone paying attention, as iPhones are nearly ubiquitous in the wild while the various phones on the Android platform are a fairly rare sighting. The news from Nielsen instantly discredits the earlier “small volunteer online survey” from NPD group which some of the more, uh, enthusiastic members of the Android user base had been misrepresenting as being actual marketshare numbers. As it turns out actual smartphone marketshare data, according to Nielsen, shows devices running RIM’s BlackBerry OS to make up 35% of smartphone market, a number which is in modest decline but it still atop the market. iPhone OS devices (including the iPod touch) account for 28% of the market, while even Microsoft’s Windows Mobile platform, largely considered a fading failure, still claims 19% of the market. Meanwhile the Android OS, despite endless hype from geek tech pundits and a core user base which appears to be under the mistaken belief that the Android is the dominant phone on the market, is languishing in a distant fourth with a mere single-digit 9% of the market, less than half that of Windows Mobile and less than a third that of iPhone.

With Apple expected to offer a total revamp of the iPhone this week after having spent the past two years pushing the same 3G/3GS model, those who have been waiting for a new iPhone to come to market before either entering the platform or upgrading from an older iPhone will now likely dive in with sufficient force to drive iPhone OS marketshare up significantly in the next Nielsen reporting cycle. Whether the push from the new iPhone will be enough to overtake BlackBerry in marketshare remains to be seen. But what’s clear from the current numbers is that Android OS, having less than one-third the marketshare of iPhone OS, is not nearly as relevant of a competitor as some geeks might have you believe.

Perhaps the most significant statistic from the Nielsen numbers is the fact that all smartphones combined account for less than one fourth of all cellphones in the U.S., meaning that the vast majority of Americans are still using a featureless flip-phone.

Nielsen source: Gizmodo