Not only did the NPD Group's latest smartphone sales report confound many commentators when it place Android ahead of iPhone, but it's also resulted in Apple breaking its usual silence to question the validity of such statistics.

As reported on Monday, the NPD's numbers suggested Android had outsold iPhone in the US in the first quarter of 2010 to move into second place in the smartphone market, with a 28 percent share to iPhone's 21 percent.

However, Apple claims such numbers are misleading and unrepresentative of the full picture, with spokesperson Natalie Harrison telling The Loop that "a very limited report on 150,000 US consumers responding to an online survey and does not account for the more than 85 million iPhone and iPod touch customers worldwide".

Back Android

She adds, "IDC figures show that iPhone has 16.1 percent of the smartphone market and growing, far outselling Android on a worldwide basis.

"We had a record quarter with iPhone sales growing by 131 percent and with our new iPhone OS 4.0 software coming this summer, we see no signs of the competition catching up any time soon."

Indeed, it's also worth pointing out that the NPD's numbers aren't cumulative, instead focusing solely on unit sales to consumers in that first quarter period.

Verizon va-va-voom

The Loop itself points out that much of this supposed Android surge is down to aggressive marketing by carrier Verizon, which offers buy-one-get-one-free deals on both Android and BlackBerry (the market leader according to NPD's numbers) handsets.

A similar iPhone deal with AT&T, it claims, would spur a major boost in iPhone sales that would likely push Apple back ahead of Google.

[source: The Loop]