Analyst says Android losing steam in America to Apple’s unreleased iPhone 5

While we’re at it, check out the sharp decline of RIM’s once powerful BlackBerry platform.

It’s always a good idea to take whatever analysts are predicting with a healthy dose of skepticism. That said,  Needham’s Charlie Wolf cites IDC data that portrays Android as losing ground to iOS in America. Android, of course, is the country’s leading smartphone platform which in the first quarter grabbed a whopping 49.5 percent of the smartphone market while Apple’s iPhone had 29.5 percent. The momentum cannot continue forever so it’s little surprise then that Android controlled 52.4 percent of the market in the quarter-ago period. Fortune’s Philip Elmer-DeWitt calls this Android’s “first sequential loss ever in any region of the world”, quoting Wolf’s Monday note to clients:

In our opinion, this is just the beginning of Android’s share loss in the US. The migration of subscribers to the iPhone on the Verizon network should accelerate this fall when Apple coordinates the launch of iPhone 5 on the GSM and CDMA networks. The iPhone could also launch on the Sprint and T-Mobile networks.

It looks like ol’ Charlie’s trying to offload some AAPL shares. He argues that…

simultaneous AT&T/Verizon launch of the iPhone 5 come this September will boost iPhone sales. And why shouldn’t it? Past iPhone launches in America were limited only to the AT&T network after all. Following-up, John Paczkowski opines for All Things D that a portion of Verizon customers are probably holding off their Android purchases ahead of the iPhone 5 launch. He too quotes Wolf who says, “It’s reasonable to assume that a material percentage of Verizon subscribers who plan to switch were content to wait until the iPhone 5 arrived later this year”. In other words, some Verizon folks are thinking it’s better to wait a few more months and get the latest iPhone hardware than pay a $350 early termination fee to switch to an iPhone 4. Meanwhile, Asian manufacturers are reporting a drop in Apple’s orders for the second quarter, suggesting that the company is winding down iPhone 4 manufacturing and ramping up iPhone 5 production.

Cross-posted on 9to5Mac.com