iPhone 4S Closes Sales Gap on Android as Apple Sweeps Top Three Smartphone Models

It says alot when a 3 year old iphone sells more than "the best" android.
Boom!

Pretty cool to see the 3GS still kicking arse.

Looks like Apple ate Androids lunch this last quarter.

This goes to show that the market share levitates around Apples annual release cycle. Apple being the 800lb gorilla, will famine a little before the release and feast just after it... And so will Android, but in reverse.

FYI, the world does not start nor end with America.

Im not american but by the way rumours is spelt. Im sure this is an american website

Perhaps even more striking is that the top three phone models are all iPhones.

No it isn't. This is how it's been for a while now. Apple is usually in top spot, and the 3GS has been outselling most newer Android devices.

Apple's Quality vs. the competition's Quantity.

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This is great news for those of us who are shareholders.

It's great news for everyone. It means that iPhone users are part of a robust ecosystem that is healthy and will last. It's good news for our investment - as users - in the platform.

Hm, I've never heard of the LG Revere. o_o;

I wonder how things would have turned out for Samsung if they'd gone with Apple's approach and released one phone instead of two.

By releasing two phones at the same time Samsung did two things to harm themselves.
1 - They splintered their sales. People looking for non-iPhones now have twice as many models to choose from. The two models will fight with each other for market share.
2 - They display a lack of confidence in their own products. Essentially they're saying "Hey, we know neither one of these are perfect, so we'll let you choose which one you think is better." Apple, on the other hand, displays extreme confidence in their product by saying, "Here it is. This is the best phone on the planet. We tested dozens of other designs, and this one is the perfect one."

There are the pros to releasing multiple models, but those are more obvious.

Absolutely. When you're giving them away for $0.01 to $50, no other phone can touch the iPhone 3Gs. In fact, BB is giving buy 1 iPhone 4 and get another free. You can't beat that either.

Great pricing, mediocre product, and great customer support keeps, and will continue to keep, the iPhone as the top selling smart phone.

The rest of us who want a technologically superior device will go for an Android with ICS 4.0, but we'll pay for it.

How is an Android device with ICO superior?

You probably mean because it's a cheap looking device made of plastic. Or the fact that the OS is based on Java, which is definitely faster and more technically advanced than anything else out there. Everything runs in a Virtual Machine which is always faster than not. Garbage Collection? Yep, those moments when your "technically advanced" phone just locks up for no reason? Yep, that's exactly what I want out of my phone. Have you heard of Automatic Reference Counting? I'm glad Apple went with that, because it's not nearly as advanced.

You're probably taking also about the development tools, which are so far superior to anything else out there, that it's extremely easy and simple to make apps. I can just fire up Eclipse and then go make a sandwich and program an iOS app while it loads up.

Fragmentation! Oh my, that's definitely technically advanced. I love that every single Android phone that I use is a completely different experience. Some are complete garbage and hardly respond to my touch. Some have terrible screens.

If technically advanced means the customer gets screwed because they never know what they are going to get, then you are right on.

And Apple currently sells three models. It's not about lack of confidence; it's about hitting multiple market tiers.

Yes, but when did Apple begin selling each model? They released each model in a different year, whereas Samsung released several models in 2011 alone. Apple was capable of claiming that they're released the best phone ever each time, whereas Samsung couldn't. For Samsung to say one of their phones was the best ever would imply that the other ones that they were releasing in the same year weren't as good as Samsung was capable of making them, that Samsung had cut corners.

This should demonstrate that Apple's "weakness" over the past year or 2 as Android captured bigger market share was availability on carriers.