HTC’s new "Thunderbolt" device is outselling the iPhone 4 at many Verizon Wireless (
News -
Alert) store locations. BTIG Research analyst Walter Piecyk says his team made calls to 150 different Verizon Wireless stores across 22 major U.S. cities, asking which device was selling better, see
this.
According to the analyst’s report, 61 percent of stores said the two devices were selling at about the same rate, 11 percent said the iPhone (
News -
Alert) 4 was selling faster and 28 percent said they were selling more ThunderBolt smartphones than iPhones.
The data is a bit anecdotal, but suggests that large-screen smartphones are continuing to grow in popularity. According to The NPD Group, U.S. consumers are willing to give up room in their pockets and handbags to gain a richer media experience on their mobile devices. The U.S. market share for iPhones and other smartphones with screen sizes between 3.5 inches and 3.9 inches have remained steady, but smartphones with the largest screens (4 inches or larger) have grabbed market share from devices with screen sizes that are less than 3.5 inches.
Based on the latest information from NPD's Mobile Phone Track, smartphones with 4-inch-or-larger screens, like Samsung's Galaxy S, HTC's EVO 4G and Motorola's (
News 
-
Alert) Droid X, which debuted in the second quarter (Q2) of 2010, quickly grew to encompass 24 percent of the market by Q4 2010.
The market share for iPhones and other smartphones with screen sizes between 3.5 inches and 3.9 inches increased 2 percent over the prior year's Q4; while the market share of smartphones with screens smaller than 3.4 inches, declined from 63 percent in Q4 2009 to just 36 percent of the smartphone market in Q4 2010.
The five best-selling devices included the HTC EVO 4G, Motorola Droid X, Samsung Fascinate, Samsung Captivate and the Samsung Vibrant.
There also is some evidence that the Apple iPhone is not selling as well as some had expected.
ConceivablyTech furthermore reports that
UPS was upset after it set up a special shipping program for the Verizon iPhone that turned out to be overkill, with Verizon never matching its "forecasted shipping numbers."
Of course, there are lots of potential reasons for the perhaps-muted sales. The next version of the iPhone is supposed to be coming in the summer of 2011. Credit AT&T for an effective advertising campaign that has made the "talk and surf" capability of the AT&T version known, even though few users likely make use of the feature very often, if at all.
Probably more important were the inducements AT&T offered its iPhone users to stick around, including offering unlimited data plans to customers calling in to drop their service earlier this year. See
this.
But some might also argue that the iPhone, though a wildly-popular device, now is faster credible competition from Android-based devices.
Gary Kim (News - Alert) is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Gary’s articles, please visit his columnist page.Edited by
Janice McDuffee 
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