This year could be the year of the Android, as new research today showed the Google operating system-based handsets had outsold Apple's iPhone.
A report from analyst firm Nielsen showed Android phones taking up 27 per cent of mobile phone sales for the first six months of 2010.
However, this rise has seen the relative dominance of Apple's operating system the iOS fall down to just 23 per cent.
"While the iPhone has been the headline grabber over the last few years in the smartphone market, Google's Android OS has shown the most significant expansion in market share among current subscribers," wrote the analysts in a blog post.
Yet both popular types of devices failed to overtake the leading operating system fromResearch In Motion (RIM), the BlackBerry OS.
In the past six months phones based on this OS have accounted for 33 per cent of all sales. However, along with the iOS, it has lost market share, falling by 12 per cent from the same time last year.
But Steve Jobs should not be disheartened, as the research showed the iPhone was still in the running for consumer's next upgrades.
The blog post read: "Among current subscribers thinking of switching devices, the iPhone remains the most desired phone, finding loyalty with nearly 90 per cent of current iPhone users and enticing healthy slices of Android users (21 per cent) and Blackberry owners (29 per cent) to consider the move to Apple."
Conversely, just over 71 per cent of Android users would stay loyal with their next handset and only 42 per cent would stick with BlackBerry.
