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It's an iPhone kind of day over here and we're gleefully digging in to AT&T's latest blunder...but they're not the only ones having trouble. Two other continents are dealing with their own iPhone difficulties...and a research repot confirms what we already knew: Apple's going to lose some market share to Android.

Not for You!
That's exactly what AT&T said to New Yorkers attempting to purchase an iPhone online yesterday, sometimes verbatim. A writer for The Consumerist blog named Laura Northrup called AT&T to get answers and got this instead:

"The phone is not offered to you because New York is not ready for the iPhone. You don't have enough towers to handle the phone."

Sounds honest. Which is why we were surprised when we found Peter Kafka's MediaMemo blog...he said the AT&T rep quoted unspecified fraud problems when denying him a purchase.

Regardless of why this happened, poor communication and possible guerilla tatics to keep smartphones out of a market glutted with them make the wireless carrier the butt of jokes again this week. We're not sure how much more abuse smartphone owners are going to take from them, which brings us to our next point.

Android to Grow
Of course, as more handsets become available (and on more carriers) the appeal of Google's Android system grows. And Forrester research analysts have predicted that those phones will soon take ten percent of the smartphone market. That's not exactly encroaching on Apple's percentage yet, but it is a little close for comfort. Clearly, consumers are tired of the rigamarole that comes with AT&T service and are looking for alternatives...and Google's looking better and better as more options and more carriers become involved.

Are they as pretty or as much of a staus symbol as an iPhone? No. But maybe consumers are starting to view that as a pro instead of a con...

O2 and China Unicom
London's getting pretty clogged up too, apparently--the O2 network (the UK's exclusive carrier of the iPhone) has been experiencing network crashes and outages since the summer. Forty eight million pounds and two hundered additional cell towers later and "most of the network strain" seems to have been resolved.

Does anyone else care to cite the obvious parallels here?

China Unicom (yup, exclusive provider) has also faced its share of issues, but not with service: they can't get anyone to buy the danged thing. Last week the mobile carrier reportedly sold its 300,000th handset, a decidedly lackluster figure considering the sheer number of consumers in the country. Lack of Wi-Fi and wide availability of unlocked, Wi-Fi enabled grey market phones just might be playing a part in those figures. A thought.

Join us in the countdown to the next Apple announcement on Twitter!

Till tomorrow, Newsies...