Apple is unconcerned with NPD's smartphone report

With the rumors widely circulating that the iPhone will soon be offered by carriers other than ATT such as Verizon very soon, this whole metric could change back. Being a single carrier offering has proven to be much more beneficial to ATT than to Apple. If Verizon and Sprint are added to the mix, likely you will see sales and market share go back to the iPhones side.

The OS horserace obscures the fact that Apple and Google have very different business strategies.

Google's strategy is disruptive. Give away the OS, let hardware manufacturers do the distribution for you, and make money on the eyeballs, apps etc. (Ironically, Microsoft not Google makes money on each Android handset sale thanks to its settlement with HTC, the largest Android handset manufacturer.) It's the same idea behind Chrome OS, just that in percentage terms, the smartphone market is turning over more quickly than PCs. Will a high-quality, corporate-sponsored, free platform penetrate the market. Duh! Anyone heard from Windows Phone lately? Is this a sure fire ticket to profit. Maybe, but not necessarily. Anyone heard from Sun lately?

Apple's strategy is what it's always been. Move the metal. Apple has demonstrated that there are huge profits in selling a tight hardware/OS bundle through tightly controlled channels. Google invites manufacturers to embrace Android and presumably Chrome OS even though they are free. Apple sues them into oblivion (Psystar), even though every Psystar customer would have to buy OSX from Apple. Will Android surpass touch OS. Duh. But Apple will continue to make money so long as a significant percentage of consumers see advantages in its tight bundling strategy.

The war analogies may be overblown, but I see this as a two front assault on Redmond. Google is trying to obliterate the MS business model. Apple has forced MS customers (hardware manufacturers) into the low-end of the pc and phone markets, making each copy of Windows less profitable.

Apple failed in the mac/windows war because their platform, revolutionary at first, quickly became old and lagged behind the market save for a dedicated few.
The same is likely to happen again with iphone/ipad and Android and Apple refuses, in what must be called extreme arrogance, to address it.
Is Steve Jobs really good for Apple right now?

Apple is so unconcerned about NPD's smartphone report, they even issued a statement about it

The NPD data doesn't make any sense. Apple has sold over 50 million iPhones. As of Q4 of 2009 Android had sold about 7 million.

Unless these 150,000 people that were surveyed bought over 43 million Android phones, Apple is still ahead of Android.

The NPD data seems to be about sales for Q1 2010, and NOT about actual market share. The media (TUAW included) has presented the data as if it was about market share (notice how everyone is talking percentages and not actual numbers of phones).

You cannot survey 150,000 people when the smart phone market is something like 100 million people and expect to get meaningful data

There are 20+ Android phones vs 1 iPhone. What do you expect. The same will happen when they start shipping Android Tablets. Google is the new Microsoft. Garbage in, Garbage out.

Looking forward to getting the new iPhone model this summer.

I'm sure they'll continue to update 3.2, just like they still release updates for Leopard, and not only security updates. They even introduce new features for PPC users.............

competition is good...

It's funny, months ago all those reports where celebrated and where accurated.

i'm not really sure if Google will continue to support legacy hardware either. will they roll out an update for the G1?

it took 3 months for 2.1 to be available for the Motorola Droid - Google really doesn't seem to care if their users are using the most up to date software.