Yesterday, DailyTech reported on the news that the plethora of Android-based smartphones on the market have finally jumped ahead of Apple's iPhone in the United States. The numbers pegged Android's market share at 28 percent while smartphones running iPhone OS were a bit further back at 21 percent.

We never expected Apple to respond to NPD's numbers -- the company is usually "above" such responses and marches to its own drumbeat. However, the news picked up steam all across the internet yesterday and Apple felt the need to respond.

Apple spokeswoman Natalie Harrison gave a statement to John Paczkowski which he posted on his Digital Daily blog:

This is 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. 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 anytime soon.

Paczkowski makes a point of noting that while NPD's numbers don't give a snapshot of the global smartphone market and only surveyed 150,000 customers, Apple isn't exactly being straightforward either. The Apple spokeswoman points out that over 85 million iPhone and iPod touches have been sold, despite the fact that the iPod touch is in no way a smartphone -- in actuality, only 55 million iPhones have been sold to date.