Droid an' Droid Incredible Top Android Smartphones, BlackBerry OS 2nd, Says NPD

Android smartphone operating system (OS) continued to spiral upwards according to The NPD Group. iPhones didn't gain much while BlackBerry dropped to number two. The average price of phone reached $90. Verizon is the top carrier, followed by AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile.

Android accounted for 33 percent of all smartphones purchased in Q2, ahead of RIM (28 percent) and Apple (22 percent).

Based on U.S. consumer purchases of mobile phones in Q2, the top 5 Android smartphones were:

1. Droid by Motorola
2. DROID Incredible by HTC (Verizon)
3. HTC EVO 4G
4. HTC Hero
5. Droid Eris by HTC

Verizon Wireless  leads among top carriers for the last three quarters comprising a third (33 percent) of the units sold in the U.S. mobile phone market in Q2, followed by AT&T (25 percent), Sprint (12 percent), and T-Mobile (11 percent). In Q2 Verizon Wireless continued their buy-one-get-one (BOGO) offers on all smartphones, including both RIM and Android models.

In spite of an overall decline in the number of mobile phones purchased year over year, the ongoing popularity of both messaging phones and smartphones, which are generally more costly than standard feature phones, resulted in slightly higher prices for all mobile phones in Q2. The average selling price for all mobile phones reached $90, which is a 3 percent increase since Q2 last year. Smartphone unit prices, by comparison, averaged $143 in Q2 2010, which is a 9 percent decrease over the previous year.

Data Note: Ths press release is from Mobile Phone Track - NPD's consumer tracking of U.S. consumers, aged 18 and older, who reported purchasing a mobile phone. NPD does not track corporate/enterprise mobile phone purchases.