Android and iOS continue to carve up the world

As a developer I think the stats that matter are % of web traffic and app sales, which at least from the last I've seen dramatically lag total android handset sales. That may change but my anecdotal experience are that a lot are sold as upgrades without people really engaging with the additional functionality where as iPhones seem to be an intentional choice for that additional functionality.

What would be interesting to see is how that 68% is sliced. How much of that % has access to the official Google Marketplace, How much of that % are non Google approved phones etc. Those numbers give would give developers a better sense of what the potential market size is like, and help identify gaps in the market.<p>The Android share is somewhat like the DOS market at the beginning of the nineties. While DOS commanded a sizable share verses Mac OS, it was broken down into 3 variants (MSDOS, DRDOS, PCDOS) with sub versions (MSDOS 5, DRDOS 6 etc). While they were mostly compatible they had enough differences to cause developers headaches.

I think the most fascinating trend here is that people are not purchasing anything but a smartphone nowadays.

Are there similar (recent) numbers for tablets yet? I am curious whether the Nexus 7 &#38; Kindle Fire are putting a dent into the iPad's domination of the tablet market.

Does this mean that Android is the Symbian of this generation of phones?

I have a hard time thinking this matters. 68% of smartphones worldwide are Android devices. Close to 70% of profits from smartphones worldwide go to Apple (<a href="http://www.bgr.com/2012/08/06/apple-mobile-industry-profit-share-q2-2012/" rel="nofollow">http://www.bgr.com/2012/08/06/apple-mobile-industry-profit-s...</a>) which doesn't make Android devices.<p>On pretty much every metric except eyeballs, Android is losing (including the value of eyeballs - advertising doesn't matter if the people seeing your ads cant pay for your product), so why does 68% of market share matter?

I just picked up my first Android phone on the weekend (Galaxy S3), and some parts I really love. Widgets change the way I use my phone. But compared to the iPhone, it's far less intuitive, it's build quality is crap, and I can't make it though a day on a charge. I wish there was another phone maker that had the polish of Apple with the freedom of Android.