Interesting Statistic
The most interesting quote for me was:
"Indeed, as Nielsen, another market watcher, revealed last week, among new smartphone owners, Android retained the top slot in Q4 2011."
I wonder what this tells us? On the one hand it could be that the overwhelming majority of iPhone 4S sales were upgrades to existing iPhones (not unlikely at all, given iUsers propensity to upgrade) or that an element of Android users are switching to iOS (equally likely given the customer satisfaction figures for all the major handset manufacturers).
I'm not suggesting it's one way or the other (and it's probably a bit of both) so Q1 and 2 2012 will be interesting to watch. I wonder in the long run how "sticky" each platform will be?
I guess the main learns for Apple will be a need to further compete at the bottom end if they choose to, for Google to chamfer the edges of Android as quickly as they can and for Android OEMs to do a better job around version upgrades to keep improving the user experience.
I wonder who'll execute best?