Will Apple’s strategy to go for other carriers affect Android sales?

Apple’s expansion of iPhone to other carriers may check the sale of Google’s mobile operating system at least in the US, according to analysts.

The drop in Android's market share from 52.4 percent to 49.5 percent in U.S in the first quarter, was its first sequential loss in any region of the world since early 2009.

Analyst Charlie Wolf of Needham believes that this is the beginning of more market share losses for Android, which began with the introduction of the iPhone on Verizon.

The loss will continue with the release of the next iPhone on Verizon and AT&T, and perhaps other carriers such as Sprint and T-Mobile later this year, he said.

Wolf thinks one of the reasons behind the delay in the launch of iPhone 5 until September is that the company reportedly plans to coordinate the launch of both the GSM and CDMA versions of the phone.

To do so in June would likely have upset Verizon subscribers who purchased iPhone 4 in the preceding months. It's our expectation, then, that the anticipated surge in iPhone sales on the Verizon network is likely to occur this fall after Apple launches iPhone 5, said Wolf.

Earlier last month, Apple COO Tim Cook had announced that the company doesn’t want to restrict itself to the rich and admitted that it was working on lower-priced offerings.

Apple’s market share rose by 12.3 percent to 29.5 percent in the first quarter. The company is likely to further dent Android's market share by lowering its margin offering a cheaper iPhone that will have a much broader mass appeal in the market and also drive up its sales volumes.

Analysts believe that Android's market share is likely to remain slow for some time, while the iOS market is likely to get a boost with the expansion of iPhone to all the carriers.

Although the market share of Android phones may fluctuate for a while, Apple is unlikely to grab market share from Android if it continues to launch a single phone model a year.