Garner has put out its latest global mobile device market share report, which brings some bits of really interesting information to the table. First off, it looks like Android has more than half of the global market in smartphones (but not mobile devices overall).
The figures speak for themselves as 52% of the devices in the Q3 – 2011 were shipped with Android on board. And it’s not only that. While Google’s smartphone platform was busy getting its belly fat, every other platform except for one lost market share year-over-year.
Robert Cozzam, an analyst for Gartner’s European unit based in Egham, England stated that Android benefits from more mass-market offerings, a weaker competitive environment and the small number of interesting products offered as alternatives for operating systems.
Some of the increase might be due to the fact that there were no iPhones available for the Q3 and the real test might be to see whether the gains can be sustained in Q4 as the dominion of the iPhone 4S will begin with its distribution worldwide.
Smartphones gained a weak one percentage point from the previous quarter jumping to 26% of global mobile-phone sales. Samsung, on the other hand is doing quite well as it shipped more smartphones than Nokia or Apple in the Q3 of 2011. In terms of operating systems, Symbian dropped from 36.3% to 16.9%, iOS dropped from 16.6 to 15.0, RIM’s BlackBerry fell from 15.4 to 11.0 and Microsoft too shared the same fate. The Windows Phone OS dropped from 2.7 to 1.5%. Cozza said in an interview once that entry-level Android smartphones are getting better and better. This might explain the gigantic dominance of Google’s operating system so far.
