The mobile phone market is changing. Depending on how you slice that market, the biggest winner in the last year was either Apple or Google. Apple is the largest maker of smartphone handsets, but Google’s Android smartphone OS is the top seller while Apple’s iOS is No. 2.
But for the top handset market share, it’s still Nokia, due mostly to its vast number of non-smartphone sales. However, Nokia’s smartphone sales are off while the company sells units with its aged Symbian operating system and waits for Microsoft Phone 7 equipped devices to appear in large numbers.
Apple enjoyed explosive growth in smartphone sales over last year, with an increase of 141.8 percent, according to an IDC report. Nokia, while still tops in overall phone market share suffered a drop in sales of more than 20 percent.
But there’s more to the smartphone market than who makes the handset. According to a Nielsen survey, Android-based phones now own 39 percent of the U.S. market compared to Apple’s 28 percent. The reason for the difference, of course, is there are multiple handset makers supporting the Android OS, while there’s only one Apple–supporting iOS.
Meanwhile, there are any number of rumors that could change the dynamic significantly, depending on what turns out to be true. For example, there’s a rumor that Apple could offer the iPhone to all U.S. carriers instead of just AT&T and Verizon Wireless. If that were to happen, perhaps there’s a chance that Apple could surge ahead of the Android devices by opening up availability. There’s certainly demand–one source at T-Mobile told me that there are about a million iPhone users on T-Mobile now–enough that T-Mobile stores are selling some iPhone accessories.
The level of hype surrounding the iPhone, especially the long anticipated iPhone 5 will also help build market share for both the device and for iOS. According to a PriceGrabber survey, 35 percent of consumers say they will buy an iPhone 5 when it comes out. If these numbers pan out (and that’s not a sure thing) then that could bump the iPhone into top place in the United States and perhaps globally in the smartphone market.

Google's Android mobile operating system was the most popular choice among smartphone buyers in June, but Apple's iOS helped Cupertino become the top smartphone manufacturer in the U.S. last month, according to Thursday data from Nielsen.

Android now has the largest share of the U.S. smartphone market with 39 percent, followed by Apple and iOS with 28 percent. Research in Motion's BlackBerry, meanwhile, is down to 20 percent.
"Because Apple is the only company manufacturing smartphones with the iOS operating system, it is clearly the top smartphone manufacturer in the United States," Nielsen wrote in a blog post.


HTC, Motorola, and Samsung also had a pretty successful month. HTC's Android phones represented 14 percent of the smartphone market, while its Windows Mobile/Phone 7 devices nabbed 6 percent. Android-based Motorola smartphones, meanwhile, made up 11 percent of U.S. smartphones last month, while 8 percent of smartphone owners had a Samsung Android device. Samsung also sold about 2 percent of Windows Mobile and Windows Phone devices.


Earlier this month, comScore said that Samsung was the top U.S. handset manufacturer between March and May with 24.8 percent of the market, while Android nabbed 38.1 percent of smartphone OS market share.

Controversial June numbers from IDC, meanwhile, said that Android and Windows Phone would be the top two mobile operating systems by 2015. That might not be too far-fetched for Android at this point, but Windows Phone has thus far had a slow start. That could change, however, when Nokia starts releasing Windows Phone-based devices later this year.