Another angle on the iPhone-killer frenzy

There is a different take on the constant rhetoric surrounding this and that iPhone-killer this week, in which a respected smartphone analyst predicts that it is not the iPhone that will be killed, or even badly injured.

Charlie Wolf, an analyst with Needham & Company, provided a breakdown of sales trends in the smartphone marketplace and served a number of interesting observations on the competition in that marketplace for dessert. His analysis shows that during the calendar quarter that included the holidays, the smartphone marketplace seems to have started to come out of its recession-induced malaise and started to rebound, growing 37 percent compared period to period, according to an AppleInsider article. The Apple iPhone led that charge, with a growth rate of almost 98 percent, while Nokia grew a surprising 37 percent, just behind the RIM Blackberry line with a 41 percent growth rate.

Phones running the Android operating system from Google gained share rapidly, but of course that is easier to do when sales are of a very small volume anyway, as is the case with Android phones. It does not take much to post big growth numbers when you start at nearly no volume at all. Wolf has an interesting take on this situation. Rather than see the new kid on the block (Android) as an iPhone or RIM slayer, which makes for hyper headlines that sell more soap, he sees the Android phones in a battle that actually exists: Android phones coming out of the gate versus smartphones running the new Windows Mobile 7.

Everyone has to start somewhere, generally around the bottom. The Android phones are there because they are brand new and don’t yet have much of a following. The Windows phones are there because Microsoft lagged behind other smartphone competitors in building a competitive mousetrap, thereby losing their market share. With Windows Mobile 7 powering a new lineup of phones, Microsoft may be able to put up a battle for last place among the frontrunners against the Android, especially if you consider Palm a fatally faded star.

The Android has all the tools necessary to conquer the Windows-driven phones: the name, the newness, and the lack of a years-long bad reputation in the business. Still, the Android is starting well below the Windows phones in terms of market share at this point, and since it takes a long time to steer a sizable ship in the smartphone pond, it may be a while before they close even that gap in US sales. At this point, Android is about as far below Apple as Apple is behind RIM, a gap that continues to close slowly. If it can surpass the Windows entries, the Android handsets can take aim at the iPhone, looking upwards from a long way down.

If things stay as they are, it is possible that Google phones will be closing in on the iPhone sometime after the iPhone surpasses the Blackberry line. However, if there is one thing that we should have learned by now it is that things do not stay the same for long in the smartphone business. Just as Android is enjoying a surge based on novelty and some good features, nothing is stopping any other handset manufacturer, either established or a newcomer, from leapfrogging that new phone on the block. It’s a very long race, and one which should hold our interest for some time to come. In the interim, give it up for for Charlie Wolf, a man who understands the concept of reality.

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