Android is No 1

Many predicted it would happen, including myself, but I don’t think many assumed Google would achieve so much in such a short period of time. In the 2nd quarter of 2010 one in three smartphones sold had Google’s Android operating system installed. This is the first quarter since Q4 2007 that Blackberry/RIM has been outsold. Even more impressive is that this is also the quarter that Apple launched its iPhone 4 and yet Android was still dominant.

Based on U.S. consumer purchases of mobile phones in Q2, the top 5 Android smartphones were as follows:

Motorola Droid
HTC Droid Incredible
HTC EVO 4G
HTC Hero
HTC Droid Eris

….a very dominating performance by HTC who must be the fastest growing mobile handset manufacturer at the moment.

It will be very interesting to see whether Android continues to gather momentum in this way or whether it is already reaching the ceiling of what is possible. I doubt that Blackberry’s Torch phone will help them much and expect them to continue to fall in popularity as iOS and Android take over.

UPDATE: Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt revealed yesterday that over 200,000 Android devices are being activated per day. So 6 million per month! In May 2010 it was 100,000 per day, June it was 160,000 and now 200,000. Perhaps the explosive growth is slowing slightly – it will be interesting to see where the peak is!