Android beats iPhone in UK
Some 28% of smartphone users owned an Android, with 26% using an iPhone and 14% a BlackBerry, the YouGov poll of 2 000 adults for Intelligent Environments, a digital banking provider, found.
More than four million British people over 18 years old own an Android and it is popular with both young professionals and older people.
Android users were most likely to spend time mapping and planning travel - 34% rated this in the top three 'apps' they spent the most time using, compared with BlackBerry and Apple (both 28%).
Meanwhile, US market researcher comScore reports that 69.5 million US citizens own a smartphone, and that one-third of these phones run Google's open source Android mobile operating system, writes H-Online.
On the popularity scale, RIM and Apple are next with 29% and 25% of users, leaving Microsoft (8%) and Palm (3%) far behind.
According to market researcher Nielsen, the US sales figures for Android phones have already been above those for RIM and Apple since July 2010, but this is the first time that Android is also leading in terms of devices in use.
Last November, RIM was in the lead with 34%, followed by Android and Apple with an almost identical share each of 25% of users.
However, Android still has a lot of work to do and issues to address, according to PC World.
Android's biggest problem is the inability for its smartphones to stay current on software. Phone makers and wireless carriers are slow to blend Google's updates with their own software modifications, so even the latest phones are using a version of Android that became outdated four months ago.
With Apple hyping up the future of iOS and the importance of user experience over specs, it's important that Google can keep Android users current on new features, the report says.
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