The Android OS accounted for three out of every four smartphones shipped in Q3, according to new figures from IDC.
The firm says that Android smartphone shipments worldwide reached 136.0 million units in the period, accounting for 75 percent of the 181.1 million smartphones shipped. The year-on-year growth rate was 91.5 percent, nearly double the overall market growth rate of 46.4 percent.
“Android has been one of the primary growth engines of the smartphone market since it was launched in 2008,” said IDC’s Ramon Llamas. “In every year since then, Android has effectively outpaced the market and taken market share from the competition.”
Apple’s iOS was a distant second place to Android on 26.9 million, but was the only other mobile OS to amass double-digit market share for the quarter (14.9 percent).
Phones running BlackBerry (4.3 percent), Symbian (2.3 percent), Windows (2 percent) and Linux (1.5 percent) accounted for the remainder.
“The share decline of smartphone operating systems not named iOS since Android’s introduction isn’t a coincidence,” said IDC’s Kevin Restivo. “The smartphone operating system isn’t an isolated product, it’s a crucial part of a larger technology ecosystem. Google has a thriving, multi-faceted product portfolio. Many of its competitors, with weaker tie-ins to the mobile OS, do not. This factor and others have led to loss of share for competitors with few exceptions.”
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