Android's Growth Continues Unabated

Gartner's figures are in and the news is all good for Android - not so good for most everybody else. The little green robot's share of the smartphone market has rocketed to 52.2% and I use the word "rocketed" without hint of exaggeration. Just one paltry year ago, its market share stood at 25.3%. That, for the mathematically-challenged among us, is a more than doubling of market share, something that even the most critical of pundits can but regard with something approaching awe.

Star of the Android universe must surely be the bane of Apple's existence, Samsung, with its 24 million sales for the quarter firmly pegging it at number one smartphone handset maker on the planet. Even encumbered by litigation aimed at delaying entry into some markets and keeping some of its most anticipated hardware permanently out of other markets, Samsung has utterly hammered the competition.

So, how did the OS competitors fare? Not well, is the short answer. Apple, for instance, captured 15% market share, down from 16.6% for the year ago quarter. That 1.6% equates to a 9% drop compared to last year's share, almost certainly due to Apple's decision to delay releasing the iPhone 4S. The numbers were still good enough to give Apple the third place on the podium. Pent-up demand for the new iDevice will no doubt improve iOS figures for calendar quarter four, but whether it can claw anything back from Android remains to be seen.

Number two in the market share race is still, perhaps surprisingly, Nokia's Symbian with 16.9% but that must be contrasted with the 36.3% it held in Q3 2010. A precipitous drop indeed. By the end of the year, it will undoubtedly have dropped to third spot, with the iPhone moving into the runner-up position.

RIM struggled as well, its share dropping from 15.4% to a worrying 11% year on year. The brand needs its new OS and a more attractive line of handsets right now if it's not to become a footnote in the history of mobile devices.

Microsoft? A year ago its sales accounted for 2.7% but this year it drops to 1.5%. Redmond possesses deep pockets and seemingly endless patience but the sales performance of its mobile OS is certainly lackluster. Maybe "dire" is a better description - Nokia may have miscalculated with its shift to WinPho. The progress of the partnership, if progress it actually is, will be eyed with interest.

So all of Android's competition have suffered at its hand. All, that is, except Samsung's Bada OS which, amazingly, managed to double its market share from 1.1% in Q3 2010 to 2.2% at the present. Samsung seems to be doing quite a few things right.

Source: Gartner