65,000 Android Phones Shipped Daily
By: Hillel Fuld
The competition in the smartphone market is most definitely heating up. While most people, or at least most geeks (let’s be honest, chances are you are one) hear constantly about iPhone sales and Apple’s increased dominance in this space, the truth is Apple is not even close to Nokia or RIM when it comes to phones sold globally.
Last week, we wrote about Android passing Apple in U.S sales and we gave a few possible explanations. There is no doubt that iPhone sales will have a boost next month when the new iPhone is released, but until then, looks like we will not be hearing much exciting news from Apple.
On the other hand, Google’s mobile OS, Android is starting to show some very serious signs of growth and improvement. For starters, the newest versions of Android, or Android 2.2 dubbed Froyo, is supposedly 450% faster than previous versions. Now, I am no statistics guy, but that does seem like a pretty incredible number (no pun intended).
In addition, more and more phone manufacturers are starting to adopt Android as their platform of choice, which will of course lead to even wider usage of Android.
The latest numbers published are that 65,000 Android phones are shipping out to distributors daily. As TechCrunch correctly points out, those are not numbers reflecting Android phones sold to consumers, but it is a safe assumption that if distributors are buying 65,000 phones a day, that they are selling them.
As amazing as those numbers are, the trend that can be learned from them is even more interesting. As of February this year, Google said they were shipping just 60,000 a day and now, 5 months later, that number has increased by a whopping 8%.
Some quick mathematics show that if Google keeps it up, they will sell somewhere around 6 millions handsets this quarter, which compared to the 8.75 million iPhones sold last quarter, is not too far off. Basically, what this means is that the iPhone has some serious competition, and as for RIM and Nokia, they are pretty safe for now, unless of course Google and Apple join forces somehow, which will of course never happen, so as I said, they are safe for now.
In terms of the actual platforms and their level of usability, it is no longer an accurate statement to say that Android’s main advantage is its open platform. After speaking to several owners of new generation Android phones, such as the Incredible, Android 2.1 is most definitely a fair rival for iPhone OS and putting its openness aside, Google has done an outstanding job with Android.
What is left to see is how the new iPhone 4.0 OS on the iPhone HD will battle up against the Android 2.2 OS with its increased speed and functionality. We won’t know the answer for a few months, but neither Apple nor Google should be sleeping at night thinking they got this, because they do not.
How do you see this space a few months down the line? Is Apple going to maintain this small lead in numbers or is Android going to catch up and leave Apple behind? Please let us know in the comments.
