The Smartphone Wars: Not the expected surprise
<p>I have <a href="http://www.catb.org/esr/comscore/">plotted the May 2011 comScore data</a>.  There are two conspicuous things to notice about it.  One is that recent rumors of an Android stallout seem utterly bogus, and the other is that Apple appears to be actually gaining some share rather than simply bouncing around 25% in a random way.</p>
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<p>In my <a href="http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=3373">last post</a>, I took apart some tendentious claims that Android&#8217;s market share had peaked in March.  We now have two months of share data collected with consistent methodology past March and I think we can say this claim is busted. Whether we interpret market share as share of total userbase or of recent adopters, there&#8217;s no stallout showing here; after slowing down a bit from the holiday season Android growth has been remarkably steady. Over-50% share still looks like happening in October.</p>
<p>On the other hand, Apple may be climbing out of a rut.  While 1.3% share growth over 18 months is nothing to brag about (especially when compared to Android&#8217;s 32.9% gain) it looks to me like during the last 4 months Apple&#8217;s competitive position has been improving just enough to be noticeable.  Given the timing, this probably is due to Apple going multicarrier in the U.S. &#8211; though if I were Apple I&#8217;d certainly have been hoping for a more dramatic improvement. Apple&#8217;s longer-term problem is that Android continues to gain about two users to every one of Apple&#8217;s.</p>
<p>RIM, Microsoft, and HP continue to tank.  Microsoft may be falling a little faster recently. Overall, there are no surprises here.</p>
<p>UPDATE: Actually, we do get a surprise today. <a href="http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/07/report-apple-sends-15-million-iphone-order-to-taiwan-based-manufacturer.ars?comments=1#comments-bar">Ars Technica says</a> there will be an iPhone 4S, except it calls it a 5S, with a ship date of September.</p>
