The latest numbers are in for the mobile phone market, and even though most of the statistics historically don’t change all that radically in the span of a few months, there’s no other word to describe the cataclysmic shift happening with RIM and Google.
In terms of hardware manufacturers, Samsung still produces more phones than any other company. Thanks to its sheer amount of carrier partners and different models, it carries 24.5% of all mobile phones sold in the US. That’s a 0.9 percentage point change in just a few months.>
Samsung is followed by LG, Motorola, RIM, and Nokia, keeping the top five manufacturers in exactly the same spot they were in August. The most recent numbers are for the three-month period ending in November.
The only big story on the manufacturer side is Motorola. The Droid effect may be wearing off, as even though Motorola’s still third in the running, it lost 1.8 percentage points of market share between August and November. It now commands 17% of the market.
But the biggest story is not with hardware, but software. And yes, RIM is still at #1 but the gap is closing quickly. In August, in the US, RIM had a dominating 37.6% market share of smartphone platforms in the country. Now, it’s down to 33.5%. And in second place is Google, with Android springing all the way from 19.6% to 26%, and within reaching distance of RIM.
In all of this, the iPhone didn’t change much. It went from a 24.2% market share to 25%, but because Google did so much better, Apple’s position went from #2 to #3. Microsoft and Palm also saw a decline.
It really emphasizes what we’ve been seeing, with increased attention to Android, less excitement whirring around the iPhone, and people jumping from Blackberry by the shipload.
2011 is going to be an interesting year in the mobile space, no doubt about it. [[BlackBerry]]
