What the iPhone did for Apple, now Android is doing for Google! The search giant has taken the title of the most popular smartphone operating system worldwide.

According to a report released by research firm Canalys, Google’s Android operating system has raced to the top spot of the smart phone software market overthrowing Nokia, the decade long king of the mobile software arena.

The report shows that for the fourth quarter of 2010, phone makers sold 32.9 million Android-enabled phones world wide versus Nokia’s 31 million.

Here is a breakdown of the smartphone market:

The reason behind this shuffle in positioning can be attributed to the fact that Google doesn’t manufacture its own phone hardware but instead chooses to sell its Android OS to phone makers for free. This allows phone manufacturers to adapt it to their specific devices. As a result, Android has become the most favored software for most phone makers in the U.S.

Canalys Analyst Tim Shepherd explains what lies ahead for the US market:

The US landscape will shift dramatically this coming year, as a result of the Verizon-Apple agreement. Verizon will move its focus away from the Droid range, but the overall market impact will mean less carrier-exclusive deals, while increasing the AT&T opportunity for Android vendors, such as HTC, Motorola and Samsung.

What’s interesting is that many experts that Android would only become the number two mobile OS after Nokia’s by 2012. However, they became number one by 2011.

In this world of “mobile internet” where Android phones are gaining rapid popularity & mobile searches will soon replace PCs, Microsoft also has some serious issues to consider before they are completely out of the picture.

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