The NPD research group recently reported that the market share for Google’s Android platform was now higher than the iPhone’s. Apple disagrees and tells the “Wall Street Journal” (http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2010/05/10/android-vs-the-iphone-the-battle-heats-up/) the info is “limited” and misleading.

Apple points to other figures out recently from IDC indicating that the iPhone has 16.1% of the smart-phone market on a world-wide basis. Those figures put the iPhone well ahead of Android handset makers HTC and Motorola.

“This is a very limited report on 150,000 U.S. consumers responding to an online survey and does not account for the more than 85 million iPhone and iPod touch customers world-wide,” Apple spokeswoman Natalie Harrison told the “Journal” in speaking of the NPD report. “We had a record quarter with iPhone sales growing by 131%, and with our new iPhone OS 4.0 software coming this summer, we see no signs of the competition catching up anytime soon.”