Google & Apple Leave The Competition Trailing

Google & Apple Leave The Competition Trailing: The latest figures on the state of the U.S. smartphone market confirm what we already knew in that Google and Apple are dominating the scene, but they also underscore just how much work the competition has to do to even make an impact let alone catch up. The figures come from The NPD Group and are good for the year up until October.

The two front runners, Google and Apple, control a whopping 82% of the market between them. Google's Android platform is the leader with over half the market (53%), whilst Apple's iOS platform saw an increase in its share and now stands at 29%. That's great news for those two comanies, but others aren't so fortunate.

RIM, which seems to lurch from one disaster to another these days, now only controls 10% of the market. Just two years ago in 2009 RIM had a 44% market share. Even last year RIM was able to boast that it had 25% of the market under its belt. The phrase 'how the mighty have fallen' would seem very apt in RIM's case. A series of unexciting handsets, technical problems, corporate intransigence and market pessimism have seen RIM dwindle to a shadow of their former glory. At this rate it won't be long before their market share slips into single figures.

It's not just RIM who are facing hard times though, Microsoft too is up against a challenge in the American smartphone market. Windows Phone 7 only has a 2% share and even when combined with WindowsMobile (yes people are still using that) Microsoft barely manages to scrape together 5%. For all their marketing and the positive critical reception Windows Phone received at launch it simply hasn't made much of an impression with consumers. Of course Nokia has weighed into the battle and no doubt Microsoft is hoping that the world's biggest handset manufacturer can make a success of Windows Phone were others have failed.