Apple iPhone 4th top selling US handset

Link: Mac Rumors: Apple iPhone is 4th Top Selling Mobile Phone in U.S.

Strategy Analytics states that the iPhone has been the top selling phone for AT&T accounting for 13% of all AT&T phone sales, which makes it the 4th top selling handset in the U.S.

Well, maybe there’s hope for the dire US handset marketplace, afterall?

Update: Do check Ricky’s comment below — he links to a slightly irate Russell Beattie who points out that ‘4th’ isn’t anything to be proud of, considering the hype and marketing behind the device.

However, let me say this: In a marketplace where, despairingly, right now, people are walking into mobile operator stores and *paying* for 5-year old (yet newly manufactured) featureless Motorola handsets complete with a 24 month contract, the fact some people are selecting an iPhone warms my mobile heart. Of course, an iPhone-sporting public aren’t entirely useful to the raft of mobile operators around the planet who’ve made it their business to create games, applications and services for the likes of Symbian or Windows Mobile. But at least they can adapt to the iPhone — and the iPhone doesn’t render the premium text path unsuable. If anything, hopefully the iPhone will, along with existing efforts, push more modern handsets from the likes of Nokia and Sony Ericsson into the forefront in America.

Otherwise, it’s just dire. Dire. Absolutely dire. The amount of times I had to stop in total despair walking around Los Angeles… LOS ANGELES, come on, it’s meant to be a hip place, modern, with-it… and the teenagers sitting next to me in The Cheesecake Factory bring out 100% grade-A shite handsets. Send a text. Then carry on talking. The handset, for many, will never — not in the next five years, anyway — be more than a functional communications device.

And while that continues, the mass marketplace across America will remain the domain of the quick-draw holstered Motorola RAZR crowd who spend $25 a month AND NO MORE on their telecoms services. Because why should they? $25 a month should be enough for anyone, right? A few minutes, a few texts and a once-in-the-blue-moon call to an auntie in England.

So, the iPhone is doing well in America? Good. Thankfully. PRAISE BE TO JOBS. At least SOMEONE has strode into the market and shaken it up. He’s done everyone a very big favour. Forced some innovation and hopefully awoken the concept in many-a-mind that your handset is not just a glorified walkie talkie but a personal communications and multimedia wonderland of sorts. So instead of just getting the 34th iteration of the RAZR when your two year contract is up in 2010, maybe you’ll take a look at the new version of the Nokia N95, or a Sony Ericsson K890 or similar.

Gahh.

I really have to put blinkers on when I’m walking around in America lest I start grabbing people and marching them to the nearest Nokia store.