The iPhone may have sparked the smartphone craze, but Google’s Android operating system has continued to capture more of the market as the months go by. It was recently revealed that 350,000 people are activating Android accounts on a daily basis, accounting for 10 million per month and this development does not appear to be slowing down.
A key advantage for the growing popularity of Android devices is that there are so many phones that carry the operating system. Compare that to the iPhone, which only has one model that comes out every year. This is a significant disadvantage for Apple and allows Google to reach more customers as time passes by.
However, since Google does not receive revenue from each phone sold because its partners do, the amount of money the company could be generating is not as great. Apple and BlackBerry sell their own handsets and operating systems, receiving profits from all angles. Still, Android is catching on like wildfire, while BlackBerry and the iPhone try to catch up.
“Android handset users are downloading applications at the rate of 500 million per month,” wrote Information Week’s Eric Zeman. “To put that into a little perspective, it is the same as saying Android users are downloading 16.66 million apps per day, 695,000 apps per hour, 11,500 apps per minute or 193 apps per second. It’s a shame Google didn’t include more data about the breakdown of free versus paid apps, and where those apps all came from.”
As smartphone users wait for the next iPhone – currently only offered on AT&T and Verizon – Android operated smartphones are on many more carriers, allowing the operating system to reach a greater percentage of the users. What once appeared to be a market that would be dominated by Apple, Google’s Android operating system seems poised to be on top for a while, until Apple offers the iPhone on more carriers or another smartphone hits the market and captures the imagination of users.
