Apple is claiming the survey from NPD is anything but accurate. They claim NPD asked 150,000 people in their survey, and based on those results, gave Android the higher market share. If correct, that is soooo inaccurate, it's not even funny. You would think when discussing market share, you'd find out .. ya know ... the actual market share. Sales numbers would be the only way to do that.

Apple is claiming they sold so many phones in the last quarter alone, they don't expect any smart phone competitor to catch up anytime soon. Though let's be honest, even if Apple is 100% right on this, and they still have the lead, how long can that last when iPhone is only available through one carrier? While the Android OS is on numerous phones, on I believe all carriers. Some are even offering buy one get one free for certain Android phones, just like with certain Blackberry phones. An offer we will NEVER see with the iPhone.

At the end of the day, I believe the smart phone market will end the same way for Apple like the computer market did. They'll gladly give up market share, if it means they can keep total control over their product. In many respects, I see iPhone running on fumes. While there hasn't really been a true iPhone killer, I mean touchscreen wise I find iPhone second to none. Feature wise ... I dunno. Apple takes baby steps, while their competitors are upping their game. Now a lot of the features that Apple fanatics will salivate over in the 4.0 OS, are already standard features in the Android OS. How long can the 'wow' factor last for iPhone? Apple seems to have been playing catchup the past 1-2 years, while other smartphones get newer features first. Eventually, the well will run dry if Apple doesn't bring more to the table.

Here's the link to the story, and I'm posting the response from Apple below.

http://www.loopinsight.com/2010/05/11/android-market-share-over-iphone-not-as-impressive-as-it-looks/

“This is a very limited report on 150,000 US consumers responding to an online survey and does not account for the more than 85 million iPhone and iPod touch customers worldwide,” Apple spokesperson Natalie Harrison, told The Loop. “IDC figures show that iPhone has 16.1 percent of the smartphone market and growing, far outselling Android on a worldwide basis. We had a record quarter with iPhone sales growing by 131 percent and with our new iPhone OS 4.0 software coming this summer, we see no signs of the competition catching up anytime soon.”

I swear.. Apple is the new Microsoft.

Eh, the only thing that I see that really suggests NPD may be inaccurate is the allegation that it's an online survey. Other than that, Apple's right that it's misleading to look at the NPD numbers and conclude that Android is beating Apple in worldwide sales or US installed base, but that doesn't mean Android didn't sell more phones in Q1 in the US than Apple.

If NPD's survey was carried out properly, there's absolutely nothing wrong with a sample size of 150k people.

lol Apple is scared of the Android.

I hate apple so I'm glad to hear this. the iPod Touch I have is my last apple product ever (or at least that goes by the name "i-something")

So long as Apple has their iTouch + iPhone + iPad overall market dominance they will attract the lions share of the market revenue for applications and games and thus the majority of content for the forseeable future.

Between Apple and Google I would pick Apple any day of the week TBH.