Going by the statistics forwarded by analytics firm Flurry, the Google Android-based Verizon’s Motorola Droid is evidently the first notable iPhone challenger - with the first-week sales figures of the new smartphone reportedly standing at almost 250,000!

Flurry, a mobile applications’ specialist, noted that the opening-week sales figures of the Droid were much above T-Mobile’s HTC myTouch 3G, though they were well below the Apple iPhone 3GS - while the former managed to sell 60,000 units in its debut week, the latter sold nearly 1.6 million.

However, the key difference between the Droid and iPhone sales figures is that while iPhone was released in eight countries, Droid was released in only one. Moreover, iPhone 3GS gained heavily from the existing base of iPhone users who upgraded from older versions.

The first-week Droid sales figures given by Flurry have further been substantiated by Mark McKechnie, of Broadpoint AmTech, who noted that 100,000 Droids were sold during the first weekend; as well as Macquarie’s Phil Cusick who reported 200,000 Droid sales in the opening weekend.

Commenting on the Droid figures, Peter Farago, Flurry’s Marketing VP, wrote: “The launch of Droid signals the beginning of a viable platform alternative to the iPhone. With Droid, Motorola has raised the bar for Android handsets, contributing to an ever-growing base of Android handsets upon which applications developers can build a business.”