Android continued its dominance of the global smartphone market in the first quarter of 2013, accounting for 3 out of 4 smartphones sold, according to new data.
The study, from the IDC, found that Android shipped 162.1 million handsets in the quarter, giving the platform a 75% share of total worldwide shipments, compared to Apple’s 37.4 million devices giving it a 17.3% share.
Apple actually saw its strongest first quarter ever in terms of shipment volumes, but its iOS platform still couldn’t keep up the pace of growth seen by Google’s Android, which is available on a multitude of devices from numerous manufacturers.
Shipments of devices running Android surged from a 59.1 percent market share in the first quarter of 2012 to 75 percent in the same period this year.
Google itself announced at its annual I/O developers conference on Wednesday that activations of Android devices recently surpassed the 900 million mark. Just a year ago, there had been 400 million activations, while the 100 million milestone was achieved in 2011, demonstrating the platform’s accelerating growth.
Two horse race?
With Apple and Google seeing their platforms combine to take more than 92 percent of the smartphone market, remaining competitors were left to take the scraps.
BlackBerry and Microsoft have each stepped up their games with their respective BB10 and WP8 OS’s of late. Microsoft managed to take third place, with a 3.2% share over BlackBerry’s 2.9%.
Microsoft’s Windows Phone, driven primarily by its partner Nokia (79% of all its shipments), grew the most of all platforms, with a rise of 133.3%- the largest growth of all platforms.
IDC also notes that over the last year, shares of the biggest platforms have fluctuated, although Android’s current 75% is the highest in a year.
The last time that Android approached 75%, in Q3 2012, Apple’s share was only 14.5% as people held out for a new iPhone model.
This indicates that Apple’s growth this quarter was at the expense of declines for other smaller platforms.
Source: www.idc.com
