First the confession. After breaking the screen on a Nexus One in one week flat, I’ve now done in a Motorola Droid X in record time as well.
An envious store assistant at a Radio Shack in Los Angeles had just been pawing it and telling me how much he wanted one. Five minutes later, after an encounter with a few drops of coffee – honestly, nothing much – the screen was kaput.
What is it with these big, dazzling screens? I may be ham-fisted, but mobile phones should be able to handle some rough wear. My battered MyTouch Android has taken much more of a licking and is still going strong (though its weak, 528 Mhz processor heart now beats so painfully slowly.)
Anyway, this is not slowing the advance of Google’s Android operating system, which is on a roll particularly in the US.
In the second quarter of this year it accounted for 34 per cent of smartphone sales there, making it the most popular software platform, according to the latest figures from Canalys (there had already been reports of Android overtaking iPhone in the first quarter of the year.)
Nielsen figures also out today show Android with a 27 per cent market share in the first half of the year, above the 23 per cent share of the iPhone but still below the BlackBerry’s 33 per cent.
There is room for all three to do well. It is Microsoft that should be most worried. With only 11 per cent of the market, down from 20 per cent a year ago, there is a serious risk that its attempt to fight back with a new user interface based on “tiles” will fall flat in a market that has already embraced the iPhones, Androids and BlackBerries.
