T-Mobile has sold 1 million G1 Android phones

T-Mobile USA has sold 1 million G1 Android phones, six months after launching the product.

T-Mobile corporate parent Deutsche Telekom revealed the number as part of its earnings announcement earlier this week, as spotted by Telephony Unfiltered. The G1 was released in October and accounts for about two-thirds of all the 3G phones running on T-Mobile's network.

It's an important milestone for both T-Mobile and Google, and a little surprising that it went undiscovered for several days. Android phones are also available in other parts of the world, but both Google and T-Mobile have put a ton of weight behind their efforts in the U.S. They have yet to capture the public's attention the way the iPhone did when it was originally released: Apple sold 1 million iPhones in about two months, and 1 million iPhone 3Gs in its first weekend.

The news comes as a recent report from AdMob shows that Android now owns about 6 percent of the U.S. smartphone market as measured by operating systems. That puts it in fourth place, behind the iPhone, the BlackBerry, and Windows Mobile phones, in that order.

T-Mobile and Google may have sold 1 million G1 phones in the U.S., but they've got a way to go to catch Apple's iPhone.

(Credit: AdMob)

[Remo_Williams]

The OS needs better hardware, stat, and Google still needs to make phone calls the top priority of the device. It's still too laggy.

-Remo

[deslock]

I'm running the new OS to be released this month and I can tell you the laggy calls thing is not the case. Also the new OS supports running at 528mhz speed (faster than iphone which is still locked underclocked from max processor speed) and it is snappy as hell.

New hardware would be great but unless it's a significant upgrade beyond what any other phone can do, the only thing to me that new hardware would bring is a nicer aesthetic. Maybe a larger screen but then again how large can we get before it's too large to comfortably fit in pocket? Hard to say. Maybe another inch?

Some of the newer android models in prototype right now look great though. Let's get them out there.

[chabig83]

"There is no chance that the iPhone is going to gain any significant market share." - Steve Ballmer

[aliamir1]

considering tmobile is the 4th largest provider and this is the only android phone out there, this is a pretty good sign of android progressing. Development for the G1 is very easy with zero cost of entry opposed to the iphone where you need a mac and have to pay 100 bucks to become a developer.

[kfdodgerfan]

Lets be honest here. For the most part, developing for the iPhone has been an incredibly easy process. They just had their 1 billionth app DL in 9 months time. As a developer, you can have the choice of going for the G1 with its 2 million reach or the iPhone/iTouch reach over 36 million.

[pavlozahozhenko]

Wrong, Android development is not completely free, you have to pay $25 to register on Android App Store.

[ZetaZeta_]

You don't have to offer your application over Android Market, though, right? Can't you offer it yourself? (Like all linux FOSS) (I'm not sure, that's why i posed it as a question).

[Magicland]

Is it just me, or is that chart from March of 2008?

[Tom Krazit]

Ad Mob originally mislabeled the chart. They've got an updated one on their site now, I'll switch that in, but the data is unchanged.

[No invasion of privacy]

This is absolutely crummy reporting: AdMob does not report market share of the phones at all, it reports the proportion of users of the phones who browse the sites that include their software. There is a substantial difference between the two metrics. What the AdMob data tells you is that iPhone users are much more active at browsing than e.g. Symbian phone users (in terms of numbers in active use, Symbian phones completely dwarf the iPhone share of the market, but very few owners of Symbian phones ever use them for browsing whereas the vast majority of iPhone users use them frequently for browsing).

What would be an interesting report would be to work out the ratio of browser use to market share - is the iPhone higher or about the same as e.g. Android in those figures. It is undoubtedly much, much higher than Symbian, but everything would be.

[DrtyDogg]

don't forget the fact that admob is also pushing their in app advertising service that is only available to the iPhone developers. They have something to gain from pushing these numbers in it's favor.

[sting7k]

The chart says "US Operating Systems", Symbian has almost no penetration in the US because Nokia sells very few phones here now. I don't know any US carriers that carry their high end N-series phones. AT&T has one E-series and then there are the cheap-o candy bars of course.

[mrcockrell]

1 million, wow you could build a house with all those bricks

[iBuzz]

Such a small market to try to sell $0.99 apps into.

[AppleSuxLeo]

That`s all ??? Sprint will sell that many Pre phones in a week with the likes of Bono , Jimmy Fallon , and Angelina Jolie raving about it.

[alienjazzcat]

Remember, Android will not be just phones.. wait for set tops, netbooks, etc.. and no Apple tax