Google's Android platform is most often compared to Apple's iPhone, because they're the two most advanced smartphone platforms, belong to the two giants of Silicon Valley, and because they compete over consumer mindshare, developer mindshare, and bragging rights.
But if you look at the data, it's not the iPhone that has necessarily suffered the most from Android's rise. It's RIM and the BlackBerry.
Earlier this week, we ran a chart showing comScore stats for U.S. Google Android subscribers by carrier, noting that Verizon was responsible for about half of Android's subscribers in the U.S. (The context is the new Verizon iPhone, which kick-starts a new stage in Apple's war with Google.)
At Asymco, Horace Dediu then added a few months' worth of AT&T iPhone subscriber data to our chart, showing how much bigger the iPhone is than Android at AT&T.
Now we've added the full year's worth of AT&T-iPhone data, and as you can see in the chart above, it's still growing nicely, despite the rise of Android at every other carrier. (Sure, it may have grown faster without Android, but it's still growing.)
But what's just as interesting is how much RIM and the BlackBerry have suffered at Verizon because of Android's gains there. Verizon was once RIM's most important carrier partner; now the BlackBerry is about to become Verizon's third-favorite smartphone platform.
Over the last year or so, RIM -- led by the crappy flagship BlackBerry Storm, remember that? -- fell to 45% of Verizon's smartphone subscriber base in November, 2010, per comScore. That's down from 69% of Verizon's smartphone subs in November, 2009.
Meanwhile, during that time, Android rose to 44% of Verizon's smartphone subscriber base, up from 2% the year before. (For the record, these comScore stats represent 3-month averages ending in the months specified.)
Because of the growth of the smartphone market, RIM managed to keep its absolute number of Verizon subscribers flattish until it started dropping late in 2010. But compared to Android's growth during that time, it's very troubling.
The bigger question going forward is whether Android will keep growing at Verizon now that it's going to start selling the iPhone. And, then, what the heck happens to RIM?
Read more about that in our analysis from yesterday, "Only Now Are We About To See The Real Battle Between iPhone And Android."
On February 28, Axel Springer, Business Insider's parent company, joined 31 other media groups and filed a $2.3 billion suit against Google in Dutch court, alleging losses suffered due to the company's advertising practices.
