Android’s astounding 886% growth

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The great Goog doesn’t do anything by half measures, and if the latest stats from independent tech analyst group Canalys are correct, the firm has managed to grow the market share for its Android operating system a whopping 886% in the second quarter.
Canalys reckons the search-engine giant has even gone as far as grabbing 34% of the U.S. smart-phone market share, knocking both BlackBerry and iPhone operating systems from their perches.
While all  of this sounds impressive, it certainly doesn’t hurt that Google Inc. is not actually offloading shiploads of phones like its rivals Research In Motion Ltd. and Apple Inc., but rather has an OS that is being used on more than 20 handsets from various phone manufacturers across all major carriers. Indeed, some might wonder why it took Google this long to topple the iPhone or the BlackBerry in terms of smart-phone market share.
Some might also wonder whether there’s actually that much room left for Android to grow, a valid concern seeing as the U.S. mobile market is some 90% saturated.
China, says Canalys, is the next frontier where Android is concerned, with the operating system only controlling a measely 7% of the Middle Kingdom’s market, where Nokia Corp. leads the pack.
Analysts believe that Google’s fence-mending with China and China Mobile’s commitment to its own flavor of Android, OMS, will help push the operating system over the wall.
Of course it also doesn’t hurt that Google is doling out Android for free, something proving impossible to resist for many handset makers that simply don’t have the time or resources to spend on software development.
And when all is said and done, 886% growth is nothing to sniff at.