(Image courtesy of Computerworld)

If Apple needs yet another reason to go after hardware maker HTC -- and in a roundabout way, Google’s Android -- they might want to look at some current market share numbers.

Computerworld is reporting on some new figures from web analytics firm Quantcast, which shows that Google’s Android is experiencing some “pretty spectacular” growth over the past few quarters, largely due to the open-source operating system being used on hardware from a number of different manufacturers, versus Apple’s iPhone OS being strictly on the iPhone and iPod touch.

There’s no doubt that the iPhone is still the clear market leader in terms of web consumption, with more than four times the market share than Android. But that wide lead is starting to erode, little by little.

Computerworld notes that in the last month alone, the iPhone lost 3.2 percent of its market share, while competitors Research in Motion and Android both “gained considerably.” Google’s phone market share has grown a whopping 44 percent over the past quarter and almost doubled over the past year, while the iPhone has lost somewhere in the neighborhood of five to 10 percent over the same periods.

The question now is, how will Apple react to the change in market share with this year’s model of iPhone, expected to debut in June? Inquiring minds want to know...