Lost in the understandable excitement of Apple's
And it's Apple by a nose
Figures released on Wednesday by market-researcher Kantar Worldpanel show that the Apple iPhone has overtaken Google's
Apple's 44.9% market share just nipped Android's 44.8% in the 12 weeks leading up to Christmas. Market share for the iPhone in the U.K. also rose from a year ago, from 22% to 34%. Apple has now sold 315 million iPhones to date, Apple reported on Tuesday.
"Overall," Kantar's consumer-insight director Dominic Sunnebo told Financial Times, "Apple [iPhone] sales are now growing at a faster rate than Android across the nine countries we cover."
Not even out of the gate
With iOS and Android taking up 89.7% of the U.S. market, who's sopping up the remaining 10.3%? That would partially be Research in Motion
That still leaves 4.2% of market share left to be explained, and if any of it went to Nokia's
The little company from Cupertino that could
While it is just by a hair, beating Android for the top spot in the U.S. smartphone market share is still astounding. Android is the Microsoft Windows of smartphone operating software, i.e., anyone and their CEO's mother can pick it up and adapt it to their handsets without too much fuss, which can make the end cost to the consumer much more attractive than that of the iPhone.
Apple's displacing Android here says a lot for the power of the brand. Yet with the phenomenal earnings report and this important milestone reached, the stock is still trading for the very average P/E of just 16. Maybe investors feel the company has been on too strong of a run for too long, and that it's sure to stumble any minute. Alternatively, maybe now is the perfect time to buy. But if you're going to you'd better hurry -- the share price is already on the way up.
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