From September 2009 to September 2010, Google’s share of the U.S. mobile phone OS market has risen a staggering 18.9 percent, going from 2.5 percent to 21.4 percent, while Microsoft has seen its share of the mobile OS market decline from 19 to 10 percent. Notably, the other major players in the U.S. mobile OS market either held their share, in the case of Apple and Palm, or saw a modest decline, in the case of Research in Motion. Clearly, the rise of Google’s open source Android OS represents a greater threat to Microsoft’s future in the mobile OS market than it does to other companies.
Given Microsoft’s dramatic loss of market share, several industry analysts have speculated that Microsoft’s lawsuit against Motorola, alleging that several of Motorola’s Android based phones violate Microsoft patents, is in direct response to the pummeling Microsoft has taken at the hands of Google. This … Read the rest