Android extends market share lead in 2011

Despite the overwhelming media hype regarding sales of Apple's iPhone in the final quarter of 2011, Android-powered devices accounted for 51.6% of global smartphone shipments for the quarter, versus iPhone's 23.4% as reported Friday by researcher Canalys. Android smartphone shipments grew 148.7% compared to the same quarter in 2010, to 81.9 million units, and a total of 237.8 million for the full year, up a huge 244.1% over 2010.

In contrast, second placed Apple sold 37.0 million iPhones, in a December quarter that for the first time combined an iPhone model launch with the Christmas holiday period, a "perfect storm" of favorable conditions for the iDevice maker. For the whole of 2011, Apple shipped 93.1 million iPhones, demonstrating a growth of 96% over 2010 - a strong result but still far shy of Android's performance.

Canalys reports that smartphone market share for the whole of calendar 2011 shows Android leading with 48.8%, iOS had 19.1%, and Nokia's Symbian took another hit with just 16.4%. RIM made a modest recovery in the fourth quarter to end the year with 10.5% of the global smartphone market. WinPhone has still to make its presence felt, achieving just 1.4% in 2011.

In terms of smartphone handsets, biggest Android vendor, Samsung, shipped 91.9 million branded handsets for 2011, up from 24.9 the previous year. Rebranded products, like Nexus S and Galaxy Nexus, are counted as Google handsets by Canalys, so not included in the Samsung total*, guaranteeing that Samsung did even better than the figures here reveal and thus taking top spot despite media claims to the contrary.

While Symbian market share took a hit, Nokia received a boost in handsets in Q4 via the first WinPhone units coming on stream in the quarter. The total for all Nokia smartphones in 2011 was 77.3 million.

*Edit: Corrected error in para #4 - Bada-using handsets are already factored into Samsung total

Source: Canalys