Android Market Share Jumps, Blackberry Sinks

Nielsen's numbers look very similar to Comscore's.

April's Comscore report on US smartphone market share, which echoes the Nielsen numbers, continues the trend we've seen over the past year: Android market share grows (up over 5% since January, to 36.4%), Apple's share grows a little bit (up 1.3% to 26%), and RIM's Blackberry market share heads for the depths (dropping 4.7% to 25.7%). Congrats to RIM, they now have a solid hold on third place and can look forward to fourth place if Microsoft succeeds in its alliance with Nokia to boost Windows Phone 7 into competition. Nokia had better get busy, though. Apple and Googl are rapidly moving targets, improving both their hardware and their software regularly. Nokia and Microsoft have to really come from behind.

At this point I'm not sure what features Nokia could really put into their phones that would significantly differentiate them from their Android and iOS competition. Nokia knows how to build sleek phones with good screens, but so do a lot of companies now. Even Nokia's volume advantage is not in play here...Apple's got huge numbers, and so do a number of Android phones, and it will be a while before Nokia could even match those volumes, let alone pass them significantly. So I don't see any price advantage on the manufacturing side.

Which leaves the software side for the advantage. Microsoft has an interesting interface, but they are woefully behind in lining up developers, much less a library of killer apps. Apple has a long lead in cutting deals with major media companies for content. What's Microsoft got aside from Xbox Live? Not much, honestly.. oh yeah, they have Skype now. But they wouldn't try to make that proprietary... it would kill most of the value of Skype. Still, Microsoft is trying hard, and they do have a lot of money to throw at the problem. They may come up with some competitive apps.

Meanwhile, Android continues to grow... but developers continue to struggle to make money on the platform. Apple continues to grow its market share slowly, but they seem to be a much better place to make money for developers. I suspect that new announcements for Apple at their developer's conference this week may help their growth numbers. Rumors continue to swirl about what to expect in the next iPhone, whether it may be a less major update than the last one. The more important thing to Apple's overall growth in iPhone numbers is going to be pricing. I'm sure they'll introduce a new iPhone at the high end of the price scale sometime this year. Will they then move the iPhone 4 down to a lower price? Probably, and that could mean a substantial boost in numbers. If Apple does indeed introduce a new iPhone designed to be smaller, lighter, and less expensive, that could also be a big boost.

Smartphone Market Share: Android Up, iPhone steady, Blackberry Who?

Market share... isn't that something RIM used to have?

It's interesting to watch to the market share numbers for smartphones over time. There are no big surprises in the numbers themselves: Android continues to rise (up to 34.7% from 28.7%) , Apple gains slightly (up to 25.5% from 25%), Blackberry continues its headlong plunge (dropping 4.5% to 27.1%; they've gone from over 40% a year ago to about 27%), Microsoft continues to go from bad to worse while awaiting Nokia's introduction of Windows Phone 7 phones.

The real surprise, to me, is what has to happen before RIM takes action to prevent (or, at least, delay) its complete loss of market share and relevance. Are they striving to be the beeper company of the 21st century?  Apple should pass them this quarter in terms of market share, and from there RIM is just racing downward to see how long it takes to reach Microsoft's market share of under 10%.

At least Nokia figured out that it was in trouble, though they had to completely change out their management team in order to come to that realization. Now they are trying to do something about it by adopting Windows Phone 7, though how successful that effort is we won't know for a couple of years. RIM, though, just continues making Blackberry phones with minor improvements as if nothing has happened in the phone market. Kind of sad, really. It must be ego; the co-CEOs of RIM just don't want to admit how badly they've screwed up, and so they will continue to deny there's even a problem until they're escorted off the campus by security. Let's hope, for RIM's sake, that occurs sooner rather than later.

Meanwhile, if you're a developer looking to make some money on games, better try iOS or Android. I guess there is an opportunity for a small developer on Blackberry or Windows Phone 7, since you could stand out in a field that's much smaller than Android or iOS, and thus get some attention and brand equity before taking your title to the platforms where you can really sell a lot of copies. For larger developers, though, there's nothing to gain by looking at the Blackberry marketplace. Except, perhaps, a delightful frisson of schadenfreude.