Thanks to aggressive pricing (and Steve Jobs’ Reality Distortion Field), the iPhone is now officially the best-selling consumer handset. And AT&T is probably thrilled at this development as it means more people are suckers enough, I mean, savvy enough to sign up for one of its pricey data plans.

Bloomberg had the figures (research from NPD Group), showing that the iPhone has finally beat Motorola’s Razr, even after just three months on the market last quarter. Not that the Razr hadn’t had a good reign – three years is nothing to scoff at. It just makes you wonder what the other phone makers were doing wrong that a phone that was technologically mediocre but style savvy ruled the handset marketplace.

NPD’s numbers exclude those sold to companies. This pretty much proves that as far as consumers go, they’re voting for the iPhone with their wallets. Good numbers since total handset purchases have dropped 15 percent to 32 million units while Apple saw increased sales of the ‘Jesus phone’.

“It’s one of the first devices to provide a desktop-like browsing experience that we’ve seen consumers flock to,” Ross Rubin, an analyst at NPD, said. He said the device represented  “a fusion of design and an advanced operating system.” It helped that the phone was priced at $199 due to subsidies as well as the popular App Store which had developers signing up to be included.

Motorola’s Razr is pretty much a technological dinosaur in an age where people can surf via Wi-Fi or high speed data networks such as #G or HSDPA. The ailing phone division is putting its hopes on Google’s Android to keep it afloat but it’s a highly competitive marketplace, what with Samsung, HTC and Nokia already heavily battling on the smartphone front.

The iPhone’s not the best smartphone out there, but US consumers , it seems, would likely beg to differ.

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Entry was posted on Tuesday, November 11th, 2008 at 8:06 am under Uncategorized.  Print This Post

Read more entries by Erna Mahyuni.
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