Apple's iPhones and Google Androids rule the Smartphone Market by Far

The domination of Apple and Google in smartphone industry in America left other brands to rethink and rebuild their strategies, and yes, Microsoft and RIM are among them.  

As far as the U.S. market share is concerned, the Android remained on top throughout the duration of 2011 for 53%, while Apple catapulted its shares to a whopping 29%. The share of BlackBerry on the other hand, has slipped down to 11%, while Microsoft powered phone could not get its game going as it Windows phones remained at 2% share.  

Indeed, Google and Apple are not only taking control of the game, but they're changing the gaming field, forcing other players to constantly and completely reinvent its game plan in this area. Executive director of Connected Intelligence for NDP group Ross Rubin, sees 2012 as the year for companies' labors to bear its fruits. Other smartphone companies now understand the situation, and many of them had spent the year 2011 to strategize and regain their lost grounds in the industry. RIM fell into a big drop to 11%, while Google gained a whopping 53% share just between January and October of 2011. Now that all, except Google and Apple are developing their business strategies to protect their share of the market, 2012 will obviously the proving grounds for all their hard work.  

The big move was started by Google's purchase of Motorola Mobility in August 2011 at $12.5 billion. That was the division of Motorola up until January 2011. And one of the biggest reasons for this move is to protect the Android from its anti-competitive threats, which obviously comes from Apple, Microsoft and other giants of the industry. Also, that particular move by Google strengthens their ties with Android and its hardware manufacturer, Motorola. Maybe, the most important thing though, is that, Motorola holds over 14,500 patents all granted and more than 6,500 pending pant applications all over the world. With their acquisition of Motorola, Google opens a lot of doors for innovation of these Androids.  

It's also no secret that Motorola threw all of its weight into manufacturing mobile devices since 2009, releasing their first Droid, running Android. That thing was designed for Verizon network. And just last year, the world watched as they released their Droid X and Droid 2, making their competitors shake on the boots. So what can Acer, HTC, Samsung, LG and/or Lenovo do? 

RIM is already trying to catch-up, redeeming itself from their good run in 2006, when more than half of smartphone sales were by RIM. In the past half a decade, the sales share dropped to 8%. Now that they're developing the next generation operating system - BlackBerry 7. RIM is now on 5th place among the world's top smartphone companies. After those changes, all we have to do is to wait and see. 

What happens in the next couple of years can be anyone's guess, but if neither of Apple and Google commit huge blunders, the picture is unlikely to change.