Apple Continues Its Hot Streak

It's been a good week for Apple. First, it announced boffo earnings for the latest quarter – its first quarter since the death of legendary CEO Steve Jobs.

The company reported a 116% surge in profits, sending its stock price up more than 6%, to $446 a share.

Profits were pushed higher by sales of 15.4 million iPads in the quarter. That's more than the total desktops, laptops and tablets that HP sold during the same time period.

It sold even more iPhones – more than 30 million – a 128% increase over the same period a year ago. iPhone sales were helped by the addition of Verizon Wireless and Sprint as U.S. vendors.

Even though the Android smartphone platform remains number one in the world, a new report by Kantar Worldpanel ComTech shows Apple's smartphone operating system is now growing faster than Android. In the U.S., the report shows Apple has taken a slight lead.

iPhone 4S

The report credits Apple’s iPhone 4S launch with increasing the company's momentum. In the latest 12 weeks of sales, Apple’s share was at 44.9% while Android took 44.8% of the US market. Apple also increased its share of the British smartphone market from 22.0% a year ago to 34.0%.

“Apple has continued its strong sales run in the US, UK and Australia over the Christmas period, said Dominic Sunnebo, global consumer insight director for Kantar. “Overall, Apple sales are now growing at a faster rate than Android across the nine countries we cover.”

The company found that Windows 7 is yet to break past a 2% share in any country despite the media attention gained by the new Nokia Lumia range. The Nokia Lumia 800 finished the fourth quarter just outside of the top 10 smartphones sold in Great Britain.