It is quickly becoming a two horse race in the global smartphone market. According to IDC, Android and iOS accounted for 82% of the market in the first quarter of 2012. A year ago, the two held a combined share of 54.4%. Gains came primarily at the expense of Symbian and BlackBerry.
“The popularity of Android and iOS stems from a combination of factors that the competition has struggled to keep up with,” said Ramon Llamas, senior research analyst with IDC’s Mobile Phone Technology and Trends program. “Neither Android nor iOS were the first to market with some of these features, but the way they made the smartphone experience intuitive and seamless has quickly earned a massive following.”
Android dominates the market with a 59% share. Shipments grew an impressive 145% over the same quarter a year ago. Apple also showed tremendous growth, rising from 18.3% to 23% thanks to an 88% growth in shipments. Symbian, which still holds third spot, plummeted to a 6.8% share. BlackBerry lost more than half of its market share and now sits in the single digits at 6.4%. Holding down sixth position behind Linux (primarily represented by Samsung’s bada) is the combination of Windows Phone 7 and Windows Mobile. Their share now stands at 2.2% but shipments showed an encouraging 26.9% increase.
Android holds the longest list of smartphone vendor partners. Unsurprisingly, Samsung, now the world’s largest smartphone manufacturer, accounted for 45.4% of all Android-based smartphone shipments.
Read more: IDC