It’s a good sign of the increasing competition in the ever growing mobile market.

Android accounted for around 28 percent of the unit sales, and whilst there are lots of promises from Steve Jobs about new iPhone technology to come, could it just be more iHype?

Android went up 5.2% to hold a 9% share of the market whilst Windows mobile fell to 15.11% and WebOS fell to 5.4%.

Whilst Apple still hold 25.4% of the market with their iPhone brand, this figure has dropped slightly in the last quarter, whilst Blackberry (Research in Motion) gained 1.3% to 42.1%, still a commanding lead.

So what can we expect in the next quarter?  Android continues to develop and the variety of phones available are growing all the time.  Can Apple match that rate of progress?  Whilst BlackBerry still maintain a healthy lead due to business use, will companies start to test out the Android platform as a realistic alternative?  They haven’t with the iPhone, but Apple never marketed their platform for that market whereas the Android system has far more flexible software, hardware and development platforms.

Watch this space for the figures from the next 90 days where we’ll have a look internationally at how things are moving.

Personally, I’m converted.  After using the iPhone for a while and owning a few blackberry’s, I switched to the HTC Magic under the T-Mobile “G2″ banner and every day I’ve used the phone, I’ve found another use or feature which I genuinely like.  Saying all that, there is a long way to go yet and there are many improvements I’d like to see and expect.

Whilst an open source operating system is great in theory, like communism, it often can’t work in the real world and does need control and restrictions.  It looks like Android is splintering off and different devices are using different versions with a wealth of new technology coming in to the market place, there’s a chance the OS could follow the same path as Sun’s J2ME and lose it’s momentum.

With v2.0 on the horizon, backwards/forwards compatibility looks like it could cause problems!  Developers are starting to show signs of frustration as unlike the iPhone which has a code base maintained and built by Apple, the Android OS is changing all the time.  Hopefully Google will get a handle on it all and ensure that these problems are ironed out ready for the holiday rush.

Overall, I’m still a happy Android fan, but I’d hate to see it start to lose favour at such an early stage.

Quite a few applications have been ported over from the iPhone to the Android OS, but not the other way around.  Perhaps this is a sign that people are valuing Android applications more as the phones start to gain popularity in the market place.

View Mystique on 101 Best Android Apps

View Mystique on 101 Best iPhone Apps

Click here to read Bendroid’s article on the port

The two new phones codenamed “Morrison” and “Sholes” pack a big punch with some serious spec. The CPU in the Sholes is a 528MHz Qualcomm MSM7201A and they have 256MB RAM. On top of which a built in 512 MB Flash ROM (Read Only Memory) and support up to 32Gb microoSDHC memory card. The display is a HVGA (320×480) and it has lots of extra sensors and regular gadgetry that you’d expect from a modern mobile device.

Take a look at the full specs here: click here for the full spec.

It looks like that kind of power and functionality will not only rival the iPhone, but blow it out of the water!