• by John Capone , March 26, 2010

The sales race between handsetmakers HTC, Apple, Motorola and others begins to sound like an Abbott and Costello routine after a little while. Who's on first? Who's suing whom? Who's got the most patents? Who's sold the most phones on a Tuesday within 90 days of launch? Nexus One? Oh, that's our shortstop.

Reports that the Android-enabled Nexus One outsold the iPhone by 16% for the month of February must have HTC chief Peter Chou -- who was busy at the CTIA Wireless conference earlier this week declaring the handset "a winner" despite lower-than-expected sales -- over the moon. To say nothing of the high fives that must be being exchanged in Mountain View with this news on top of an earlier report from Flurry that had the Droid besting sales of the iPhone in the first 74 days of the devices' respective launches (Nexus One came in a distant third in that regard).

Of course, Nexus One beating the iPhone could just be a result of the fact that everyone already has an iPhone (or so it seems at times).

Now all of this reeks of a sort of numerical silliness since the phrase "numbers don't lie" is a lie, since, of course, numbers lie all the time. Speaking of numbers, a call the the UK office of RCS Limited, an international trader of cellular phones and digital camera to which 3G.co.uk attributes the report of Nexus One's February sales triumph, resulted in a chat with the company's accountant, who reported that everyone had gone home for the holiday, and them gave a curt cheerio.

Currently, the Nexus One is available unlocked for more than $500 or through T-Mobile with a contract (though rumors continue to swirl about when the phone will come to AT&T and Verizon). HTC isn't sitting on its laurels either. The handsetmaker also announced the EVO, coming exclusively to Sprint's 4G network this summer. The company isn't pinning itself Google though. Chou also confirmed at CTIA that HTC would have a device for Windows well-received new mobile platform before the fourth quarter of this year.

All of which is to say that the battle for cell supremacy might not be between Apple and Google at all, but come down to HTC vs Nokia -- which happens to be the number one selling phonemaker in the world (though it has not made serious inroads in the smartphone market).