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Android Phone Demand Up 250%, iPhone Down
CWmike writes "A 'monstrous' jump in demand for Android-equipped smartphones has turned the market upside down, according to a retail pollster. Of the people who told ChangeWave Research in a mid-December survey that they planned to buy a smartphone in the next 90 days, 21% said they expected to purchase an Android phone. That number represented a 250% increase over the 6% that pegged Android as their mobile OS of choice when ChangeWave last queried consumers' plans in September. 'That change rivals anything that we've seen in the last three years of the smartphone market,' said Paul Carton, ChangeWave's director of research, adding that the sudden surge in consumer interest in Android had 'roiled' the market. 'This is an indication that Android has finally caught consumer interest,' added Carton, who cited the recent advertising campaign for the Motorola Droid smartphone as the reason why interest in Android has skyrocketed. Android's leap translated into good news for Motorola and HTC, the most prominent makers of Google-powered handsets, with the former reaping most of the benefit. Motorola's share of smartphone purchases in the next 90 days shot up from 1% in September to 13% in December. Carton tagged the company's Droid as the reason. '[It's] the first increase for Motorola we've seen in three years,' Carton said." Here is the ChangeWave report.
I tried computing the percentage of Android-powered-phone sales growth since 2007, but I kept running into PosInf errors, whatever that means. Sorry. I'll try harder next time.
Isn't the "fastest growing" anything usually in last place?
Of course, it counts for nothing if it does not say good about iphone/apple. If it says anything bad about apple/iphone, let's switch to some other statistics which immediately puts iphone at the top.
Seems like they're attributing this to a Motorola add campaign for the Droid, while Apple hasn't been advertising the iPhone much lately. Apple has a trend of announcing new iPhone models in mid-January and right now we're in what time of year again?
I often wondered what was so special about the iPhone. I have never got a satisfying answer.
One of the "features" I loathe about it is the fact that typical users including so called "light users" have to charge it daily. Insane...where is the time for such attention?
I held out forever with a Razr and no smartphone. It wasn't a money issue, work offered to buy me an iPhone a long time ago. The wife (and damn near everyone else I know) has an iPhone. I've used them but never liked them. And the rampant fanboyism drove the last nail in Apple's coffin for me. (Seriously, you people and your blind freakin' loyalty just make me want to puke right after I nut-kick you.) I bought a Droid the day it was released and I'm, (how do I say it?) satisfied. It has a few fairly annoying shortcomings, and to be honest if the Nexus One was (rumored to be) available on a decent carrier here in the US I'd be kicking myself for not waiting a little longer for a better hardware/design package with the Android OS. Granted I'm surely not in the majority here, but I am pretty impressed with Android so far. I don't see the Droid (or any device currently forthcoming) as an "iPhone killer" but it certainly filled a niche with weird folks like me. I'm just glad there is a choice now and more choices to come. And no I never saw WinMo or Palm as a valid choice, had horrid experiences with both of em. Never tried a Blackberry though, might have been tolerable.
These one in 10,000 geeks and their "I want open" bleating is especially annoying since the twits are everywhere. Somehow they manage to pollute every single thread about iPhone on every forum on the Internet, making one post out of three about "it would be better open". They can't just let mainstream folk like us have a mature discussion. It's as if they don't realize there are only four of them.
It wouldn't be so annoying if they weren't so prolific. They must each post thirty thousand times a day - unless there's an error in my calculation somehow.
Help stamp out iliturcy.