What did the addition of Verizon Wireless mean for the iPhone’s battle against Android? The extra U.S. carrier resulted in an 8.2 percent bump, eroding the multi-carrier open source platform’s lead over Apple, according to a new survey. Android’s share of impressions fell to 48 percent in March, while iOS rose to 31 percent, up from 27 percent. That’s the word from the latest Mobile Mix report by Millennial Media, an independent mobile network.
Although 14 of the top 20 mobile devices use Android, Apple’s iOS still leads in applications, with nearly half of the applications written for the Cupertino, Calif. company’s device.
Apple’s iPhone is the No. 1 mobile phone with RIM’s BlackBerry Curve in second place. As for manufacturers of all mobile devices, Apple is ranked No. 1 with 32 percent in March. Samsung is No. 2 with 15 percent and HTC has more than 10 percent of impressions, the agency reported.
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
6 responses to “Millennial: Verizon Helps Apple Gain on Android’s Smartphone Lead”
This is highly misleading. A major flaw is that these are ad impressions, not unique users or devices. But worse is that back in December they reported Apple with 32% and Android with 46%. I think their figures are a bit of non-sense, because a) they’re but a single ad network b) they’re counting impressions not users and c) their numbers skew to the campaigns they run not the landscape as a whole.
http://www.millennialmedia.com…
I’d treat all of their figures as suspicious given that three months ago they said Android gained 8%. And their claim that Verizon helped is pure conjecture.
This whole “iOS vs. Android” thing is driving me nuts. Android isn’t making gains on Apple’s market share. It’s making gains on non-smartphones. It’s replacing the crappy little devices that can’t run apps or do a decent job of surfing the internet. If anything, iOS sales are increasing.
“Android isn’t making gains on Apple’s market share”
Actually it is. I think what you mean is that Android isn’t making gains at the expense of Apple’s sales.
“If anything, iOS sales are increasing”
True but only marginal increases lately, where as Android sales are increasing by leaps and bounds. But that doesn’t make Android better, or worse, it just means a lot of Android phones are being sold.