iPhone may be poised to bump its market share

Smartphone sales dropped across the board in the US for the first time in Q3 of this year. The Apple iPhone saw a dramatic drop in sales, likely because of the newly released iPhone 4S, but surprisingly all non-Apple smartphones also saw an overall drop in sales, which has analysts predicting big things for Apple, and some possibly very bad signs for Android.

The numbers from Morgan Keegan analyst Tavis McCourt show that smartphone sales from AT&T and Verizon declined in Q3 2011 both compared to Q2 and compared year-over-year to 2010. Android in particular also saw a decline in sales compared to Q2, but did report a small growth year-over-year. McCourt says that these numbers point indicate that many smatphone users may be stalling on upgrades in order to get the iPhone 4S, and claims that this could be an "ominous sign for Android vendors."

The idea that smartphone users were stalling to get the iPhone 4S seems to be a solid one, especially given Apple's strong opening sales. However, we're having trouble accepting that this is an "ominous sign for Android", because while there were some new handsets released for Android in Q3, the major releases that people have been waiting for are the Samsung Galaxy S II, Samsung Galaxy Nexus and DROID Bionic.

Q3 ended September 30th, and the Galaxy S II wasn't released on AT&T until October 2nd, and its Verizon cousin the Galaxy Nexus isn't due out until November, so there is a possibility that Android users held off on upgrading for those devices and not the iPhone 4S. Just as the iPhone 4S sales numbers can back up part of McCourt's idea, the global success of the Galaxy S II can be used to back up our idea that this may not be as terrible a sign for Android as McCourt believes. The data could certainly point to Apple taking back some market share from Android as well as other smartphone makers, but we're not sure that "ominous" is the right adjective.