That was fast: Samsung is top Android phone maker in U.S.

Market research firm Gartner has named Samsung Mobile both the top mobile phone manufacturer in the United states, and the top seller of Android Smartphones as well. In less than one year, Samsung has gone from having practically no Android phones in the U.S. market to outselling the market's early entrants HTC and Motorola.

Samsung's very first Android smartphone was announced in late April 2009, but the company was concentrating its initial efforts on the European market. Coming into 2010, Samsung's only Android smartphones in the U.S. market were the Moment on Sprint and the Behold 2 on T-Mobile.

It wasn't until March 2010 that Samsung's Android-powered snowball really began to roll down the mountain into North America. At CTIA 2010 in March, the company revealed the Galaxy S smartphone brand, and three months later the first Galaxy S phone went to retail with AT&T. Within the next three months, there were Galaxy S phones on all the major wireless carriers in the United States.

In the span of time between the end of March and the end of November, Samsung went from having a 9.2% share of the Android smartphone market to having 32.1%.

"The Galaxy S portfolio has played a significant role in Samsung's success in 2010," Dale Sohn, president of Samsung Mobile today said, somewhat stating the obvious. Samsung has shipped more than three million Galaxy S smartphones this year, and the related Galaxy Tab tablet is reportedly selling about 600,000 units per month.
Tablets, however, are a convergent market, and Samsung does not necessarily have the same advantages that it has in the mobile phone sector. While it does offer carrier-subsidized versions of the tablet, Wi-Fi only versions of the device are also expected to be available.