If you were wondering who dominated the AT&T holiday shopping market for smartphones this year, it was Apple. Between the period of December 1st- December 27th, AT&T sold nearly 981,000 iPhones (66% of total sales), compared to the 128,000 Android devices (8.5%) that were activated. There were even more flip phone sales than Android—as they seem to have got them beat by just a smidge, contributing to 8.6% of total phones sold. BlackBerry’s accounted for 5%, as well as QMD.
Since Verizon accommodated the iPhone, much of AT&T’s phone sales were lost, but this recent report leads us to believe that their sales are doing just fine—981,000 iPhones is a lot of iPhones!
But on a global scale, Android seems to still have iOS beat. MSNBC reported a victorious statistic: Android’s 47% share has iOS beat; Apple makes up 29% of the global market, followed by BlackBerry’s 16.6%. In terms of growth, Apple succeeded due to their end-of-the-year 4S release, rising from 9.8% to 11.2%.
So what does this mean for 2012?
According to Forbes, it will be good for some, bad for others. While Android took the lead this year, their main concern in 2012 deals with Oracle patent wars that could jeopardize either their system code or cost them a giant fee. Microsoft will also be thrown into the mix with the latest Windows Phone and BlackBerry, but Ewan Spence thinks, “Microsoft [will] make no impact on the mobile market, and they withdraw the grand unifying experiemtn of Metro UI on Xbox, Widnows 8, and Windows Phone. [...] [and with] [RIM’s] delay to handsets with the new version of the OS, it’s hard to see what else they could do to damage themselves in the market[.]”
Many factors could switch up the numbers, so nothing is set in stone for 2012—just the annual anticipation for the next big phone announcement.
(via Redmond Pie & Forbes)
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