Google's Android operating system is the one to watch in the mobile market. Android has significant momentum behind it: Research firm Comscore reports that its share, though small, has quickly doubled in the past year to 3.5 percent in October 2009.
That share is likely to grow as more consumers become aware of the OS. Brand recognition for Android is growing too, largely due to Verizon's Droid ads, which premiered this fall. Comscore reported that in August 2009, only 22 percent of mobile users had heard of the Android, while just three months later, in November, that figure was 37 percent.
Rather than competing strictly with Windows Mobile phones or RIM BlackBerry devices, the Google platform is also directly competing against Apple's iPhone (which recently topped Microsoft's Windows Mobile in U.S. market share of smartphone OSes). The Comscore study found 17 percent of respondents in the market for a new smartphone said they planned to purchase an Android-supported device, with 8 percent of those planning to purchase a Verizon Droid, compared with 20 percent of respondents who said they planned to purchase an iPhone during that same time period.
It appears Verizon's advertising is paying off: When survey respondents answered the same question in August 2009, only 7 percent indicated an intent to purchase either the T-Mobile G1 or the T-Mobile MyTouch -- which were the only Android-supported phones available at the time. Twenty-one percent of respondents planned to purchase an iPhone in the next three months.
Still, the iPhone does not seem to be in imminent danger: For example, Tokyo-based research company Impress R&D recently found that the iPhone 3G and the iPhone 3GS account for 46 percent of the smartphones in Japan.
Comscore's analysis of mobile media consumption on smartphones describes users of Apple and Android-supported devices as more likely to engage with mobile media than an average smartphone user. That means carriers are likely to get users to subscribe to more expensive data plans. Users of the Apple iPhone are the most likely to consume mobile media, with 94 percent of users doing so in September 2009, but they are followed closely by 92 percent of Android device users (mostly T-Mobile G1 users) -- which is 12 percentage points higher than an average smartphone user.
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