With the release of the Apple iPhone 4 last Thursday (June 24), Research In Motion announcing the same day that it passed the 100 million BlackBerrys sold mark and with Google’s Android platform growing in popularity, we are truly in the midst of the most active and competitive smartphone market ever.

Last month (May 24), Nigel Kendall of The Times, London wrote about Google joining the race against BlackBerry and iPhone. “Among established systems, Apple iPhone OS, BlackBerry OS, Microsoft Windows Mobile and Symbian (used by Nokia, the world’s biggest cellphone maker) are all vying for our hearts and cash, and nowhere is there more cash to be made than in the business market,” he wrote.

Some highlights, from Kendall’s article, include:

• BlackBerry has dominated the smartphone business market with its secure synchronization with work e-mail and easy qwerty typing. RIM still controls 63 percent of the business phone market.
• Apple outdid RIM in visual design – the iPhone is “cuter” than the BlackBerry.
• Google’s Android OS is provided free to manufacturers and offers comparable functionality in a friendly package, similar to that of the iPhone. In April, after only a year on sale, Android phones outsold iPhones for the first time in the U.S.

RIM passes 100 million BlackBerry mark

“RIM says that its revenue climbed 24 percent over the year-ago quarter from $3.42 billion to $4.24 billion,” wrote Eric Zeman of InformationWeek (June 24). “On that revenue, RIM netted $768.9 million, up from $643 million in the year-ago quarter. The company sold 11.2 million BlackBerries and has now shipped over 100 million of the popular mobile email machines. What's interesting to note is that its subscriber base increased by 60 percent over the prior year to 46 million, with 4.9 million net new subscriber accounts added in the first quarter. After everything is said and done, RIM has about $3.27 billion of cash (or cash equivalents) in the bank.”

iPad, BlackBerry tie for share of web consumption

“After a little more than two months, Apple’s iPad accounts for about the same amount of web consumption in North America as RIM’s BlackBerry, according to data to be released by Quantcast on Wednesday,” wrote Eric Ogg of CNET News (June 15).

Quantcast reports that the iPad accounts for 0.1 percent of all web use, not just mobile web. BlackBerry devices also account for 0.1 percent. All Android devices combine to about a 0.25 percent share of web consumption. All Apple’s iOS-based devices account for about 1 percent of North American web use. Almost 60 percent of mobile web use comes from iPhones and iPod Touches.

Gartner: iPhone and Android enjoy year-over-year market share growth

As for the smartphone market as a whole, the devices enjoyed their strongest year-over-year growth since 2006, according to Gartner. “Ranked by smartphone operating system, Nokia’s Symbian led the pack with a 44.3 percent slice of the market,” wrote Lance Whitney of CNET News (May 19). “But that was down from the 48.8 percent share a year ago (see Table 2, below):