In a press release yesterday, The Carphone Warehouse announced that it had sold one million Android handsets in Europe with a year-on-year growth of 2000%. The Carphone Warehouse has been a strong supporter of Android with exclusive arrangements on handsets such as the Samsung’s Nexus S and a similar deal on the forthcoming Motorola Xoom tablet.
CPW also has by far the best range of Android handsets on the High Street with HTC, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and LG all featuring in its stores. CPW sells the iPhone too, so it’s a fairly level playing field for customers when it comes to choosing a handset.
“The speed with which Android has stormed the market is phenomenal,” said a Carphone Warehouse spokesperson. “Year on year growth is well over 2000%. It’s no surprise that Android smartphones have become the smartphone of choice for so many of our customers. Hitting one million Android sales in Europe is great as it proves that our dedication to offering an extensive range and securing top exclusives has really benefited not just us, but our customers too.”
The growth of Android is astonishing, especially as I don’t think it really has any cult appeal, compared to a certain other smartphone. It would be very interesting to see how many of the purchasers went into the store to buy an Android phone or did they go in to buy a smartphone? Maybe they just went in to get a phone.
The smartphone market seems to be very much a two horse race at the moment between iOS and Android. Can Microsoft and Nokia catch up to the leaders and will HP’s WebOS make it to the post? Interesting times ahead.
John,
It’s an interesting comment about ill-informed consumers because I would’ve actually argued that the iPhone would be the choice for ill-informed consumers. Not because there’s anything wrong with the iPhone but because the iPhone has so much mindshare and publicity that if you weren’t that sure about phones, you’d go with the one that seems to be popular. It would be the safe choice, as it were.
Just a thought.
Andrew
If Android soaks up all the poorly aged, out of date operating systems for lower end handsets but also has plenty of high end features for more expensive handsets that’ll be great.
I don’t know why everything has to be a race to dominate though, or why people have to feel like they belong to the biggest group. It’s a phone. Get on and use it. If anything though, for more expensive phones Android has as strong a cult as anybody.
Android is just the cheap Ford of the smartphone world… users don’t go to get one, they are just looking for a low priced smartphone.
There are a lot of ill informed consumers, thats Androids target market.