Apple Drops Out of Top U.S. Smartphone Spot: HTC Takes the Lead

A market analyst announced HTC had passed Apple and Samsung as the biggest smartphone seller in the U.S. Only a few days earlier, an analyst from UK based Strategy Analytics announced Samsung had passed Apple as the world's leading smartphone maker. Now HTC, based in Taiwan, has beat them both in the U.S., the world's largest smartphone market.

HTC shipped 5.7 million smart phones in the US under its own brand, giving it almost a quarter of the market, as well as an estimated 70,000 units under the T-Mobile brand.

However you count it, HTC has become a deserved leader in the US smart phone market, Palo Alto-based Canalys Vice President and Principal Analyst, Chris Jones said in a statement.

This is an awesome achievement for HTC, which has built a premium brand in a highly competitive market in just a few short years.

Additionally, HTC is launching one of the first LTE-enabled devices on AT&T's fledgling 4G network, AT&T announced Oct. 31 in a statement. The HTC Vivid will debut Nov. 6 with a dual core 1.2 GHz processor and a very large 4.5-inch qHD display (540x960 pixels). It's an Android device, though HTC also uses Windows Phone on some of its other devices, and its 8 megapixel camera shoots full widescreen HD video. The Vivid also comes with 16 gigabytes of on-board storage with an expandable microSD slot that can increase that to 32 gigabytes. Below is an AT&T video about their 4G network.

The company hasn't announced if the Vivid will come with Android's latest version, 4.0, however. The recently announced updated OS has a trove of new features and will debut on the Galaxy Nexus. It's thought that Samsung and Motorola will be updated first with Android 4.0, but HTC would probably be third in line. HTC Vivid comes out in just a few days, so it would surprising if it came with Android 4.0, but because it is a new release, it could get an OS update within a few months.

HTC Vivid will cost $199 with a two-year AT&T contract.

Tell us in the comments if you think the Vivid could be a competitor to the Galaxy Nexus even without Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich)