

Gartner: Android OS Sales Trumps iOS And RIM, Grew 888 Percent In 2010 - sandipc
http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/09/gartner-android-os-sales-trumps-ios-and-rim-grew-888-percent-in-2010/

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ryandvm
Here's to hoping we can go at least one of those posts without the brand
loyalists coming out of the woodwork to "interpret" these numbers to their
satisfaction...

How about we just agree that there is _very_ stiff competition in the
smartphone market and when that happens everyone wins.

~~~
cryptoz
You've got to admit that the rise of Android is pretty neat, though. Who would
have ever thought that 300,000 Linux kernels would be shipped to people's
pockets _every day_? That's pretty great.

And almost all the rest are Unixy too! I agree the competition is the best
part, but I love to stand back and check out the explosion of Linux in the
mainstream.

~~~
Samuel_Michon
According to the Gartner data, 184k Android devices were sold daily in 2010
overall, but it isn't unthinkable that sales have risen to 300k a day. When
Dan Rubin first tweeted about that number back in December, it sounded kind of
fishy, but it may well be true now.

In any case, the mobile market is moving to *nix kernels. Android and WebOS
have Linux kernels. IOS and Blackberry 7 have Unix kernels. (LinMo, Moblin,
Maemo and MeeGo also have Linux kernels but are either dead or dying.) The odd
ones out are Windows Phone and Symbian, both facing an uncertain future.

~~~
drivebyacct2
I think you're confusing Dan Morril and Andy Rubin. If you consider a graph of
Android's growth, I have no problem at all believing that activations in
December were 50% higher than they were in January.

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Samuel_Michon
On December 6, Andy Rubin wrote on the Google Blog: _"Today, more than 200,000
Android devices are activated daily worldwide."_ [1]

Three days later, Andy Rubin tweeted _"There are over 300,000 Android phones
activated each day."_ [2].

Given the little time in between, the latter statement raised some eyebrows.
But again, the smartphone market is growing like crazy, so it's not at all
unthinkable that right now 300k Android handsets are sold daily.

[1] [http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/introducing-nexus-
s-w...](http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/introducing-nexus-s-with-
gingerbread.html)

[2] <http://twitter.com/arubin/status/12727540783251456>

~~~
ZeroGravitas
That 200,000 figure had been quoted before though, by Eric Schmidt back in
August (which is when Steve Jobs said _"We think some of our friends are
counting upgrades in their numbers." & "We think we are ahead of everyone."_)
so if any eyebrows were raised by Rubin using it again 4 months later then
they were (or should have been) raised in surpise at Android sales plateauing,
particularly after announcing 100K per day in May and 160K per day in June.
It's not unthinkable that they're up to 400K per day by now.

It could well have been a simple typo or something intended to be updated to
the latest figures that got missed.

~~~
Samuel_Michon
That seems like a fair assumption. Most important to me, as a web developer,
is that soon most smartphone users will have modern WebKit browsers on their
phones. Whether the OS is Android, iOS, Blackberry or WebOS doesn't really
matter.

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trustfundbaby
I was listening to the Economist today and they pointed out an interesting
fact ...

Apple has 51% of the profits in the smartphone market even though it only has
4% of the market share (remarkable because Nokia once had that same profit
percentage but at 40% market share) ... that to me is a far more interesting
statistic than these sales numbers which the media seems to be fixated on.

We've seen this script before ... it was the Windows OS vs Apple products ...
the Android OS will eventually outstrip Apple ... of that I have no doubt ...
what is interesting to me is how much profits that continue to accrue to
smartphone phone makers because of their decision to use Android. So far it
doesn't seem to be helping as much as I thought it would

PS: Link to the stat I talked about
[http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/10/30/iphone-4-of-
market-50...](http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/10/30/iphone-4-of-market-50-of-
profit/)

~~~
theBobMcCormick
It's unlikely any of the Android phone OEM's will make the kind of profit
margins Apple is making, _but_ they're clearly making a lot more profits
selling Android smartphones than they were _before_ Android.

The feature phone market is drying up. All the growth (and the profit margins)
is in smartphones. So what is a company like HTC, Motorola, Samsung, etc. to
do? Symbian has been on lifesupport for ever. IOS and BlackBerry OS aren't
available to them. They could _try_ to build their own smartphone OS... but
what are the odds that'll be successful?

Basically they _need_ Android or WP7 to survive. The profits in making Android
or WP7 phones may be less than what Apple makes, but it's much better than any
other alternatives open to basically every phone maker but Apple and RIM.

Which incidentally, like you noted is a lot like the situation has always been
between Apple and everyone else in the PC market.

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YooLi
Any idea why iPads and iPod Touches are not included as mobile devices? The
report states that smartphones are a subset of mobile devices, but only uses
Apple's iPhone numbers when counting mobile devices. Using the term 'iOS
devices' makes me think iPad and iPod Touch should be included.

~~~
protomyth
I get the feeling that companies like Gartner are going to struggle for a
while on reporting numbers. I would really like to see some numbers on devices
(be they cellphones, tablets, or handhelds) broken down by OS version and
average number of apps downloaded (free & payed). With the coming tablets,
these numbers would be more useful for developers.

