Apple's decision thus far to stick with AT&T as the sole wireless carrier for the iPhone seems to be costing the company market share as Google's multi-carrier Android operating system eats up an increasing slice of the smartphone pie, new data suggest.

A survey on first-quarter 2010 smartphone sales by NDP Group found that Android-based phone sales edged past Apple to become the No. 2 system, with 28 percent, behind Research In Motion, which leads with 32 percent of the market. Apple’s share was 21 percent of the market.

AT&T Leads The Pack

The survey also found that AT&T is responsible for the most devices in use, at 32 percent nearly neck and neck with Verizon Wireless' 30 percent. Trailing are T-Mobile with 17 percent and Sprint/Nextel with 15 percent.

With the addition of Palm's Pre and Pixi phones, AT&T is now the only carrier to feature plans on all five top operating systems: Apple's iPhone, Palm's webOS, Research in Motion's BlackBerry, Microsoft's Windows Phone Series 7 and — with the new Motorola Backflip — Google's Android.

“As in the past, carrier distribution and promotion have played a crucial role in determining smartphone market share,” said Ross Rubin, executive director of industry analysis for NPD. “In order to compete with the iPhone, Verizon Wireless has expanded its buy-one-get-one offer beyond RIM devices to now include all of their smartphones.”

An AdMob survey two weeks ago also found that Android phones are gaining ground, with 46 percent of the U.S. market, beating iPhone’s 39 percent, while globally, iPhone reigns with 46 percent compared to 25 percent of Andoid phones.

The AdMob survey was based on impressions on 180,000 Web sites monitored by the mobile advertising firm, while NPD Group’s research is based on 150,000 online monthly surveys of consumer users.

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Boy Genius Report claims that they’ve got a confirmation from multiple AT&T sources that the iPhone carrier has put a block on all employee vacations for the month of June. This vacation policy indicates that Apple is likely to release the new iPhone in June. BGR reports: “Same story as…

Source : Mashable (subscribe) Explore : Web 2…

3 UK has just launched a new LG phone dubbed Viewty GT. By the looks of it, this is the LG GT405, showcased by LG back in March.

The Viewty GT features a 3 inch resistive touchscreen display with 240 x 400 pixels, 3G connectivity, A-GPS, Google Maps, Bluetooth, music player, Facebook access, 5MP autofocus camera with LED flash, 60MB of internal memory and MicroSD card support.

Since it’s offered via 3, the LG Viewty GT also comes with Windows Live Messenger and Skype preinstalled (for Skype-to-Skype calls).

You can get the LG Viewty GT from 3 UK for free, if you’re willing to sign an 18-month contract agreement of at least £15 per month.The phone is also available on PAYG for £119.99.

Via Omio, Phone Arena

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Unlike other manufacturers (i.e. HTC or Samsung), Motorola has posted a timeline with details on future software upgrades for its Android smartpohnes.

As you may already know, Android 2.1 updates for the Verizon Droid and for the Milestone are already rolling out.

Next, Motorola is planning to bring Android 2.1 to the Cliq and Cliq XT, sometime this quarter (meaning in June the latest).

In Q3, the Motorola BackFlip (for AT&T) and the Motorola Dext (for Asia-Pacific) will also be upgraded to Android 2.1.

Upgrades for the Motorola Devour (pictured above) and the Dext for Europe and Latin America are currently under evaluation.

Via Motorola

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Last year, Apple’s iPhone nearly doubled its worldwide market share of smartphone sales to 14.4 percent, up 6.2 points from the year before, according to the latest market share figures put out by Gartner.  The iPhone still trails behind Nokia’s Symbian-powered smartphones (No. 1), which saw their share decline 5.5 points to 46.9 percent, and RIM Blackberries (No. 2), which gained 3.3 points to end the year with a 19.9 percent share.

Remember, these are worldwide estimates.  In the U.S., both Blackberry and Apple are much larger than Symbian.  And when it comes to mobile Web traffic, Apple and Android dominate with 81 percent share.  According to Gartner, Android phone sales jumped 3.4 points (to 3.9 percent), but Android is still smaller than WIndows Mobile or Linux.  Those mobile OSes, however, saw their market share drop  3.1 and 2.9 percent, respectively.  Palm’s WebOS barely made a mark with 0.7 percent share.

So when you tally everything up, Symbian lost the most share (5.5 percent), followed by Windows Mobile and Linux.  The iPhone saw the biggest gain (6.2 percent), compared to smaller but roughly equal jumps by Blackberry and Android (up 3.3 and 3.4 percent, respectively).

All together, Gartner estimates 172 million smartphones were sold last year, up 24 percent.  In contrast, total mobile phone sales were flat at 1.2 billion.  Smartphones represented 14 percent of total mobile handset sales last year, up from 11 percent in 2008.  The iPhone, for all of its growth, made up only 2 percent of all mobile phone sales last year. Below are the market share tables from Gartner:

Table 2
Worldwide Smartphone Sales to End Users by Operating System in 2009 (Thousands of Units)

Source: Gartner (February 2010)

Table 1
Worldwide Mobile Terminal Sales to End Users in 2009 (Thousands of Units)

Note* This table includes iDEN shipments, but excludes ODM to OEM shipments.
Source: Gartner (February 2010)