Android chips away at Nokia and RIM from the low end, while Apple takes the higher ground

Verizon Wireless has been keeping the U.S. smartphone channel afloat in May and June thanks to the launch of no less than six high-end Android smartphones, while rival carriers saw a slight dip in sales according to market research from Cannacord Genuity. Low- and mid-range Androids were said to be on the rise, while LTE smartphones and tablets held much of the promise for the second half of the year.
Both AT&T Mobility and Verizon Wireless reportedly saw strong sales of both the iPhone 4 and iPad 2, while the iPhone 3GS and Samsung Infuse continued to pull in strong sales at AT&T Mobility. Meanwhile, the Samsung Charge, HTC Thunderbolt and Motorola Droid X2 were top sellers at Verizon Wireless, while the Samsung Galaxy 4G, HTC myTouch 4G and LG G2X added butter to T-Mobile USA Inc.’s bread and the HTC Evo 4G and Samsung Epic 4G reigned at Sprint Nextel Corp.
Mid- to lower-range smartphones from the likes of Research In Motion Ltd. and Nokia Corp. took a bit of a beating from inexpensive Android devices, while Qualcomm Inc. with its seemed best positioned to lead the Android smartphone charge with its LTE multimode Snapdragon chipset.
Apple Inc. continued its domination with its idevices, boosted by the announcement of iOS 5 and iCloud while Motorola Inc. continued to gain share.
“We believe new features introduced through iOS 5 and iCloud significantly enhance Apple’s leading iOS ecosystem, and this should lead to strong replacement sales cycles and help drive strong longer term earnings growth,” said CG.
Only RIM continued to see sustained losses at all four carriers and continued weakness in Latin America, with weak sales of its PlayBook tablet adding insult to injury.
“RIM is a company essentially in the midst of a hardware, software, and platform transition,” noted CG adding “while we believe RIM’s new 7.0 smartphones will create an upgrade cycle within its enterprise base, we do not believe they are enough to stem consumer share losses to the iPhone and Android smartphones.”
Indeed, in terms of tablets, the iPad 2 remained “by far the best-selling tablet” according to CG, especially when pitted against the “very modest sales of competing products” such as the RIM PlayBook, LG G-Slate and the Motorola Xoom. During the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference keynote last week, Apple said it had seen cumulative sales of over 25 million iPads, far exceeding the combined total of all tablet competitors.