It seems that Apple didn’t just take the best-selling phone award, but they took the second-best-selling phone slot as well with the humble iPhone 3GS.
The data comes from NPD by way of The Mac Observer and shows the Android market is strong but still can’t produce a single handset that bests even the oldest over-the-counter iPhone model.
In other words, Apple’s iPhone 4, which was more than a year old during the quarter, was the #1 phone during the quarter, while Apple’s 25 month-old iPhone 3GS was also enough to beat every single one of the latest and greatest Android device, including all of the 4G LTE devices that had been released in the previous six months.
To be clear, the combined sum of all Android phones makes the Android operating system a big presence on the industry radar (as any Android user knows) and Samsung still the biggest handset maker of the year, but the biggest slice of the money pie still goes to Apple. I like this bit of commentary from Daring Fireball:
The company with a majority share of the industry’s profits makes just one phone per year — and the gap between the 4 and 4S was 16 months — and yet their model that debuted in June 2009 remained the second-best-selling handset in the country as late as last month.
And a little coup-de-grace from The Mac Observer’s Bryan Chaffin:
During the November quarter, Apple will be offering three iPhone models, the iPhone 4S, the iPhone 4, and the going-on-three-years old iPhone 3GS, which will be free with a two year contract at AT&T. We would expect that lineup to result in Apple claiming the top three spots in rankings such as NPD’s.
But don’t worry, Apple haters. Android’s still “winning”.
Source: The Mac Observer
Via: Daring Fireball
