dumbphone :)

Certainly a more honest name than the cellular industry's "feature phone".

I had no interest in getting an iPhone, and am forced to have a blackberry for work, but when Verizon basically made it nearly impossible to keep a dumbphone (and their manufacturers largely switched over to making smartphones), I went with an Android phone

To me, the statistics quoted in the article are uninteresting at best and deceptive at worst.

The percentage of Android sales that are dumbphone conversions is far less interesting than the percentage of dumbphone conversions that are Android sales. The article goes on to say that "RIM was the highest performer" with respect to conversions because 85 percent of their new customers were conversions, when the far more important question is: How many new customers did RIM have?

Without some context around these percentages that the article doesn't provide, they don't help me understand anything about what's going on in the market.

I've recently been noticing that everyone in the UK is getting an Android phone. Until recently non-techies had Nokias and Blackberries. They are replacing them with Android phones.

Corporate email seems to be mostly Blackberries, though. IT departments don't seem to like the lack of encryption on Android phones.

Though MS does seem to be raking in the royalties from Android device makers. But, I suspect your theory is right on the money. I also wonder how Nokia's return with Windows mobile will change the dynamics of dumbphones.

Nokia will maybe ship one Windows phone, and then either collapse or ship Android.

There's far too much momentum inertia behind the switch to WP7. Nokia will ride that horse straight into the grave unless Steven Elop has a heart attack.

Our predictions are not incompatibles 

Android has proven itself to be worthy as a full blown, high powered, smart phone and has also shown itself to be capable of low end, 'dumber' smart phones.

That kind of flexibility makes it a candidate for just about anyone who's willing to get a phone at all.

I think androids advantage here is the fact that its at multiple price points, if your going to ditch your dumb phone in favor of another cheap phone why not get a low end android that can do facebook, or take nice pictures or {insert cool feature here}

Rim and Apple have/used to have somewhat compelling high end products but nothing in the price range that your average "I want a free phone" user would buy.

I don't think it confirms it at all. You've not even shown a strong correlation.

Dave Griffith: that sounds .... ominous.

I'd have to agree with others that this article does a poor job of giving any insight into the numbers - and is wrong about Android being ahead in 8 key countries - it's actually 6 of the 8. This Guardian article at least gives a bit more breakdown of percentages but still doesn't give the total numbers: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jul/11/ios-android-blackberry-smartphone-data. Is the report itself available or do you have to pay to access it? Haven't been able to turn it up in a quick Google search.

As a fan of the iOS platform myself, these numbers are nonetheless worrying as it shows a huge swing in favour of Android over this quarter last year. However, 2 things:

-it is only quarterly sample data, so can be heavily influenced by short term trends, and the iPhone 4 is an old model now (the Verizon boost only affects America and that is one of the few countries shown where Apple increased their % share over the same quarter last year). Even then it shows that Apple need to improve their refresh rate though.

-Along with this there's the fact that Apple still has twice the installed base of Android in the UK (the only market for which I saw total figures given as well as quarterly). That makes the headline of Android being the most popular OS a little misleading for me when it's based on such short term numbers. But then I am a begrudger :-)

Nitpick: I wish they'd stop labelling it as "iOS market share" and then only count the iPhone. Either call it iPhone market share or else include all iOS devices.

+John Studdert, re: "only" quarterly sample data: Except that Android has been trending up and Apple slightly down for many more moons. See http://www.catb.org/esr/comscore/

Rob: no argument here that Android is on a roll, particularly in the States, but I don't read those comScore numbers as showing Apple trending downwards, quite the opposite. However my point was that it's a poorly written article (even down to spelling the name of the company reporting the data incorrectly): the numbers they do mention are not explained well and their conclusions need to be put into context given the short-term view of the data given. Not sure what American-only comScore data has to do with that - especially as America was the one country bucking the trend to some extent in the Kantar report.

My ex-wife in Finland is considering an Android, since she can't afford an iPhone. I recommended the Samsung Galaxy S (seems like a decent unit); she says she can get one from Elisa (her carrier) for something like €20 a month including data plan on a 2-year contract. Pretty good deal. So there may be another ++ in the Android column soon...