Is that an Android in your pocket or are you just running some other arbitary OS? Chances are if you own a smartphone, you own one running Google’s ever popular Android operating system. According to the latest stats from Gartner, four in every five smartphone is running Google’s OS — and it seems to all be down to China.
Of course we heard from IDC that Android was over the 80% marketshare threshold, and it seems Gartner is echoing those claims, with the real hit coming to BlackBerry, iOS and Symbian — all of which have fallen in the last year by over a percent each. The biggest fall naturally comes from BlackBerry who managed to only power 1.8% of the smartphone market in Q3, down from 5.2% this time last year. It wasn’t just BlackBerry tumbling though, Symbian and Bada were both forced under half a percent, despite just a year ago clambering onto 2.6% of the market each. iOS also saw a slight dip, but managed to retain its second position at 12.1%, way ahead of third place Windows Phone who managed to more than double its shipments, but only receive 3.6% of the market.
It wasn’t just in the operating system war that Android was up, but Android manufacturers also dominated the top five chart, with Apple the only non-Android manufacturer making it onto the list. Samsung managed to retain its position at the top of the table, with its marketshare unchanged. LG was pushed into fourth, with Lenovo taking third and Apple retaining second. In keeping with the Chinese theme, Lenovo was joined by Huawei who was in fifth place — proving that the Chinese giants are seeing expodential growth in the Chinese market.
Whilst Nokia didn’t manage to secure its place in the top five smartphone manufacturers, it still clawed onto second place in the overall mobile phone sales, although it saw its marketshare drop even further, with Samsung widening the gap between the two manufacturers. The company which formerly sold more phones than anyone else saw its marketshare overall in the phone market drop from 19.1% to 13.8%, whilst Samsung’s rose to 25.7% up from 22.7%. Apple also saw its share of the pie rise to 6.7%, up a whole percent from 5.7.
