Both Nokia and Google are trying to undermine the iPhone revolution. Google has been claiming that they activate more Android handsets per day than iPhones, and Nokia’s vice president said at Nokia World that Nokia sales more phones than both Apple and Google combined. Also analysts are joining in with their predictions claiming that Symbian and Android will dominate the Smartphone market by 2014. And, as you would have guessed, the media is allover these stories.

This is bad for Apple, even though Android sales outside US are puny (65-70 percent of all Android handsets are sold in US), Android mindshare is increasing because of all the media coverage in US. As we all know when it comes to tech news US leads and rest of the world follows. In US, iPhone is falling behind Android because it’s available on only one carrier AT&T that everyone hates. But, comScore’s smartphone OS stats for Europe show that Apple can change the course by going for multi-carrier strategy US.

For example, in UK the iPhone (iOS) now has 29.6% market share, whereas Symbian’s market share has fallen to 37.3% and Android is at just 9.9%. Till 2008, Symbian had about 70 percent of smartphone market in UK and rest all OSes combined didn’t even add up to half of that. iPhones market share has more than tripled in that period because it’s available on multiple carriers in UK.

Similarly in France, where iPhone is again available on multiple carriers Symbian market share is falling and is now at 35.4%, Android is at just 11.8% and iOS has risen to 31.6%. But, in Germany where iPhone is available on only one carrier T-Mobile, Symbian still has 51.6% market share and iOS is at 21.2% comparable to US (23.8%).

UK and France smartphone markets clearly shows that iPhone has seen exponential growth in countries where it’s available on multiple carriers. In both US and Germany, iPhone growth has stopped after reaching a certain percent because it’s available on only one carrier.

Apple needs to get iPhone on other carriers in US as soon as possible. If Android continues to rise in US because of carrier limitation on the iPhone, its mindshare will keep rising around the world, which will be bad news for Apple. It will be really difficult for Apple to turn the tide once Android has gained higher mindshare than iPhone, even if Apple sells a better device with superior OS (it’s already happening in US to some extent).