NPD credits Verizon iPhone with stemming the Android tide in Q1 smartphone sales

As much as we were hoping to get some definitive statements from AT&T and Verizon's Q1 2011 financials about the Verizon iPhone's impact on the smartphone market, none were really forthcoming. It's left to analyst outfits like the NPD, therefore, to try and parse the data for us and read between the official lines. The latest numbers from the NPD Group's Mobile Phone Tracker indicate that Apple's share of US smartphones sales jumped from 19 percent in Q4 2010 to 28 percent in the first quarter of this year, which helped stymie Android's prodigious expansion. The Google OS went from being on 53 percent of all smartphones sold to a flat 50 percent in the quarter. Also intriguing about the period is that, for the first time, smartphones accounted for more than half of all mobile phones sold in the US, at 54 percent. The top five best-selling cellphones also happened to be smartphones, with Apple and HTC providing two each; the iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, Droid X, EVO 4G, and the Droid Incredible took home the NPD commendations