Android Most Popular Operating System in U.S. Among Recent Smartphone Buyers

Nielsen is out with new data in August showing Android as the most popular OS among smartphones purchased in the last six months, with RIMM and Apple's OS tied for second place. The interesting thing to note is this data captures a full month of iPhone 4 users, making the number seem even more impressive given strong sales for iPhone 4. In terms of overall market share among all smartphone owners, Blackberry maintains the lead at 31%, though the spread between RIMM and Apple is compressing, with Apple at 28%, and Android at 19%. We think the Android story is just getting started and given the momentum in the pipeline, its just a matter of time before it catches up with the other OS’s in the space.

Just by way of comparison, a quick straw poll here shows market share at 45% RIM, 37% Android, 9% Apple and 9% Symbian (Sony).... with 3 Android wannabes and 1 staunch Apple fan.

Augmented Reality

We're big fans of TED. This talk from Pranav Mistry at TEDIndia last November shows the potential of his "sixth sense" technology which links the physical and digital worlds. It got us on the hunt for more Augmented Reality. While perhaps not quite as impressive as Mistry's Sixth Sense, the following are available right now:

Layar: an Android app that overlays information onto your phone's screen when you point the camera at something.

We've posted about this before on this blog but Google Goggles is another Android app that pulls up data/extra info on something if you take a photo of it (an example shows review scores for a book, similar to the SixthSense demo).

Again, something we've blogged about previously but QR codes have been popular in Asia for a while but not really caught on here so much (although some magazines have used them in recent special "AR" issues). The Weather Channel in the US has started putting QR codes on-screen, so you can take a photo of it on your phone and it sends you to a page to download a weather app directly