This is a great time of year for smartphone shoppers. The new Spring and Summer lineups are about to roll out, and that means smartphone manufacturers are discounting their current handsets. And some of those are bestsellers. For instance, Amazon, one of the largest online destinations for purchasing smartphones, recently discounted the Galaxy S III Android handset in the 16 GB version to $0.01 (Sprint), $19.99 (Verizon) and $39.99 (AT&T) on contract.
This is next to free, on a handset which was the first to outsell an iPhone while both were offered from the same carriers. With more than 50 million units sold since its arrival, the Galaxy S III has really been the first handset to compete with the Apple iPhone head-to-head. Global popularity and these drastically reduced retail prices have combined to help the Android operating system outpace iOS powered smartphones in the three-month time frame that ended in February of this year.
Obviously Samsung is not the only smartphone manufacturer running on the Android operating system, but there can be no mistaking the correlation between the simultaneous Galaxy S III price tag slashing and the overtaking as king of the smartphone heap by Android. The Android share of new smartphone sales is now greater than the rest of that market combined, with the Google operating system running on approximately 51.2% of all phones sold in the period of time mentioned above.
Compared to the same time period of 2012, that is a huge increase. This time last year Android represented 45% of all smartphone purchases, and Apple stood at 47%. But the achievement by Android happens at the same time that Apple’s smartphone market share drops to 43.5%, and Android has a sizable advantage in the US smartphone sales arena as well. This data was released this week by industry analyst and online number cruncher Kantar Worldpanel ComTech.
At a time of year when many smartphone shoppers are waiting for the new handsets to arrive, a substantial amount of other shoppers are more than happy to purchase proven handsets at a drastic discount. When purchasing a phone like the 16 GB Samsung Galaxy S III, for instance, the smartphone shopper knows what they are getting. This is not the same as purchasing a brand-new handset which may or may not appeal to them, and will also come with a sizable price tag. The Samsung Galaxy S III accounted for a full 52% of all Samsung phone sales during this timeframe.
