Android has gone from non-player to a strong 4th place in just 2 years...;)
The iPhone is a good device, but it's only moderately successful when you look at the Smartphone market. Too many confuse the current media hype over the iPhone as market dominance (I believe that was a word used earlier) when the reality is that it still has a way to go to have any shot at all at the top dog (Nokia, with ~3 times the market share).
Just to put this in perspective: Apple has sold about 50 million iPhones since the introduction, back in January 2007. That's a lot of iPhones!
However, 50 million phones would be a good MONTH for Nokia.
So it's 3.5 years of sales, or ~5 weeks of sales. There's a HUGE difference there.
Market share and profits do not necessarily go hand in hand. See Dell, big market share, poor profits.
See Microsoft - big market share, huge profits. Hewlett Packard - monster market share ($114 billion in sales - more than Apple and Microsoft combined) and also big profits (more than Apple, less than Microsoft).
Big market share may not guarantee big profits, but it makes it a LOT easier to do so!
Your own chart shows Android in 6th place. Interesting how you describe Android's 7M behind Apple's 25M as "strong" while you describe Apple's 25M behind RIM's 34M as "distant."
The iPhone is a good device, but it's only moderately successful when you look at the Smartphone market.
Non-player to over a quarter of the market in three years cannot be honestly called only moderately successful. Android had the advantage of leveraging existing hardware OEMs (with brand names well-known in phones), sales channels, contracts, and business relationships. Apple started from scratch.
However, 50 million phones would be a good MONTH for Nokia.
You keep flipping back and forth between the smart phone and general phone markets.