I suppose the next thing to look at is how many users are on Android vs iOS. If it's not too different then thats a major plus for iOS, but if Android has a significant user base advantage that that could go a ways to mitigate the loss of revenue per user.

In that second chart, why's there a Samsung Galaxy S II, a Samsung Galaxy S II, *and* a Samsung GALAXY S2...? What's the difference?

In Q1 2012, it looks like Android had 59%, iPhone 23%. Of course, that is only smartphones and doesn't include the tablet market so that share would dip for Android, rise for iOS. Also, Apple's iPhone marketshare is pretty cyclical since they only release one phone a year. In comparison to Android, it will probably dip next quarter then spike in the next two quarters as the new iPhone hits shelves.

In short, it's hard to say what actual market share is for both platforms. It's safe to say that Android has about twice the market share, I think.

A friend of mine owns a Phone shop and he says there are a lot of variants out there of the Galaxy S II.. like 15 of them.. each with small difference... different processor 1.5 and 1.2 ghz, different screen size 4.5 vs 4.3.. different GPU, different batteries.... different AMOLED screen.. some have the normal the other the plus screens..  and why?. probably by demand of the providers

I feel liek I have seen similar statistics before, in a galaxy far far away, back in the 80s. Involving Apple as well, if i remember correctly....

" It also briefly talks about money, with iOS apps performing at $1.00 per user compared to $.24 per user on Android. That's pretty damning evidence. People bitch and moan about Apple's closed ecosystem but from a developer standpoint, why wouldn't you love it? The vast majority of your users are under 2-3 different hardware specs, 75-90% of them run the same OS, and users spend four times as much money on the platform as competitors' users. That's a developer's wet dream."

Uh, isn't the iOS install base much, much higher than Android? It makes sense that the money spend is also much higher...

No, you didn't. I remember the Win/Mac OS wars as well. It was always clear who was going to win that and why. The situation here is drastically different. Android doesn't have the developer support. They don't have enterprise support (and THAT is what really pushed Windows into homes... use at work, buy for home). They have no real price advantage (as of this October, most major carriers will carry an iPhone at every major price point).

Android has advantages in hardware diversity. After that, their advantages are pretty marginal. This isn't going to be a lopsided Windows/Macintosh situation. Almost every aspect of the situation is different once you ignore that a company named "Apple" was/is involved in both scenarios.

I really hate this analogy because it's so freakin' lazy. In the PC market, businesses were widespread adopters of computers before the consumer market started buying the machines for home use. Businesses bought IBM-compatible machines because they were, unlike Apple, cheap. Businesses like cheap. Businesses also liked the open nature of Windows so they could write any app they needed for the machine. It also helped that Microsoft was providing a solid baseline of business-related apps that only ran on Windows. It made the choice a no-brainer. The machines were cheap, customizable, and MS was providing a solid set of tools in which to do your business. After MS entrenched themselves in the business market, people started buying the same machines they used at work for home use. Why? They knew how they worked and they were cheap.

The phone market is nearly opposite that. Businesses did not adopt smartphone en masses before the consumer market. They were neck-and-neck from the start and the only "enterprise" solution on the market, Blackberry, is now swirling down the drain. Right now, studies show that more enterprise businesses are considering an iOS product for their employees than Android. The Android app market is lagging behind iOS. Phones don't need to be as "customizable" as their PC brethren. They don't do as much and aren't needed for as many varied tasks. No matter how you look at it, this isn't the same market.

Again, it's just a lazy analogy.

It was gauging revenue "per user". And the Android marketshare is higher. Dunno about installed base but I'm sure that's quite a bit higher as well.

But the userbase is not four times larger, which would be the break-even point between the two user bases.

"...fragmentation is going to kill Android unless Google does something about it."

I don't think so. I think most SP owners download a lot of free apps and few pay apps, keep the most useful and most fun ones and remove the other ones. I just saw some recent statistics which said that the average time people spent on smartphone gaming is already on a decline (and I bet it will decline even more), while the average time spent on social networking is increasing quickly. I think most Android users don't and won't care about the OS version of their device as long as they can play Angry Birds and one or two other games from time to time and as long as they can use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn like on any other phones. Fragmentation won't kill Android, Android won't kill iOS.

On a related note:
I just bought a Nokia Lumia 800 because Windows 7.5 is the phone OS I like the most (love the metro UI in combination with the phone design). When I bought it I was already pretty sure that the OS won't be updated to WP 8 (and a few days ago it's been confirmed), but I don't care. As far as I understood, WP 7.5 device owners will get a few of the new (and afaik still unannounced) features of WP 8. That's more than I expected but even if WP 7.5 wouldn't get any of the WP 8 features, I'd be completely satisified with my new phone as it is.

At the same time I bought my Lumia 800 (launch price 500 €, street price currently 320 to 350 €), my father ordered a Huawei Y200 for 99 €, an Android Gingerbread 2.3.6 phone and according to hardware reviewers currently one of the best smartphone offers for around 100 €. If I hadn't told my father about iOS/Apple, Android/Google and WP/Microsoft, he wouldn't even know the names of any phone OS. He definitely won't care about the Android version of his new phone.

My nephew got some Samsung Android phone and doesn't care about the OS version. Several colleagues and friends of mine got Android phones, some of them don't even know what Android exactly is let alone that it's owned by Google, most of them don't know that there are different Android versions on different phones, some do but don't know or care about the differences. (Yes, I asked them these questions, because before I made up my mind I was interested to know what people do with their phones, what they like and dislike about it and if they cared about software updates or the fact that other people got more "up-to-date" phones.).

This is all anecdotal, but my point is:
Tech sites should not overestimate the impact of OS versions. I'm sure that the majority of smartphone owners just don't care.

The more interesting questions regading SP apps are imo:
When will the app boom be over?
Will ever see a consolidation of the app market or will we forever just get those somewhat childish news about "700.000 apps now available on your phone", "...now 1 million available. Imagine the possibilities !!"?
Do phone reviewers even realize how ridicilous they sound when they claim: "Still one of the biggest disadvantages of Windows Phone: Only about 100.000 apps available at the moment as compared to 600.000 (iOS) and 750.000 (Android)"? Do these guys think I'll check all 100.000 apps on my phone and my nephew all 750.000 on his phone? Or do they mean with this comparison that the chance to find great/useful/fun apps is more than 7 times as high for my nephew than for me? And If so, how can he find them?

If I was an app developer I wouldn't be worried about Android fragmentation, I'd be worried about drowning in a sea of competitors and media which will forever list Angry Birds, Doodle Jump, Instagram, Shazam and 46 other usual suspect as "50 must-have apps".

the app boom is already over for developers... last year we could charge around 150 euros an hour to build an app.. now it's already ~50% down due to competion.. and we are worried about the fragmentation... not many clients understand that an android app costs more time/more money due to the fragmentation... we build multiple versions or stacking versions which disables certain functions depending on the OS version, there is a lot more testing, i think we have about 15 android devices at the office compared to 5 iOS, debugging costs a lot more time cause everyone manufacter has their own UI crap, screen sizes etc... we care less about the competition cause in the end your app can be advertised which is the most important aspect into an app succes many "garage" developers don't have money for..