Yesterday, I stated that Android (GOOG) is taking market share away from all of its competitors, and illustrated that Apple (AAPL) is clearly included included in this group (see Empirical Evidence of Android Eating Apple, Literally!). Today, I would like to demonstrate where that Android growth that is being bled from Apple, Nokia (NOK), RIM (RIMM), etc. is going.
The companies that have skillfully adopted Android 2.1/2.1 are literally growing like weeds. Collectively, they outstrip the growth of the iPhone, and individually most area setting internal growth records for any phone or smart phone product, often limited only by their production capacity. I have prepared the charts below using the data that I made available to my professional subscribers through the Smartphone Market Model – Blog Download Version (anyone who downloaded it yesterday should get a fresh copy, pertinent data was mistakenly locked inside the model preventing users from switching from company to company).
By comparing HTC (HTC) (a company that has specialized in Windows Mobile and Android phones with customized GUIs) handset shipment growth with that of Apple’s, both in relation to the growth in the smart phone market in general, we can see that HTC disproportionately benefiting from the expansion of smart phone use.
Click charts below to enlarge
In observing this phenomenon as a trend, you can see that HTC’s growth in shipments has surpassed that of Apple’s. This growth rate is shared by other major handset vendors who have adopted the Android platform as well (ex. Samsung (OTCPK:SSNLF) and Motorola (MOT)). Long story short, manufacturers are finding gold in them thar Anrdoid hills!
Even when taking into consideration growth trend as a function of smart phone market growth HTC sees major improvements in its shipments and penetration. This empowerment of Android handset vendors combined with the near 900% growth spurt in Android from last year and its capturing the number one spot in the US last quarter. From Digiital Trends:
New reports from market analysis firms Gartner and IDC confirm what most industry watchers already knew: the second quarter of 2010 was a boom time for smartphone sales, with both firms agreeing worldwide smartphone sales increased 50 percent compared to the second quarter of 2009. The firms also agree that Google’s Android platform also benefited significantly from that growth, with Gartner saying Android has overtaken Apple’s iPhone to become the third most-popular mobile operating system on the planet—and the top-selling mobile operating system in the United States, beating out RIM’s BlackBerry line. But the king of the hill? Still Finland’s Nokia, with either 38.1 percent (IDC) or 34.2 percent (Gartner) of the worldwide mobile phone market.
Gartner attributes Android’s success to a variety of manufacturers bring devices to market at a number of different price points. “A non-exclusive strategy that produces products selling across many communication service providers and he backing of so many device manufacturers, which are bringing more attractive devices to market at several different price points, were among the factors that yielded its growth this quarter,” said Gartner research VP Carolina Milanesi, in a statement.
Below is a smart phone comparison chart generated on Cnet.com. I use Cnet for intelligence (although I believe that there editors have shown undue Apple bias in the past) because it is arguably the most visited consumer technology website, and as such offers the deepest views of user opinions and ratings, (hopefully) unfettered by editorial content, subjectivity and opinion. Here you can potentially get a glimpse of how people really feel about their products.
Notice how the 3 out of 4 of the selected Android phones have a higher user rating than the Apple iPhone 4. This flies in the face of both the marketing mantra and what you may hear from the editorial columns. The sample sizes of the reviews are large enough to be statistically relevant nearly 300 for the Evo and 222 for the iPhone 4), and the fact that the reviewers are able (and often due) offer verbose and specific reasons for their ratings make this a rich source of opinion discovery.
I urge those who are still in disbelief of Android’s onslaught or the ability for it to outsell iPhone (ex. a battle between the two on Verizon’s (VZ) popular yet overrated CDMA network) to review the nearly 1,000 user reviews of just these 4 phones (there are many dozens of others).
This bound to release a swarm of developers to the Android platform, which creates the reflexive relationship of reinforcing Android’s growth prospects which in turn draws more development resources to the Android platform. Apple users are all too familiar with this effect.
Disclosure: No positions
