Third of all mobile phone shipments powered by Android – Canalys

Android accounted for over a third of all mobile phones shipped last quarter, and powered about two out of every three smartphones.

That’s according to new numbers from Canalys, which calculates that 438.1 million phones were shipped in Q4. The total was flat year-on-year, but included a 37 per cent rise in smartphones to 216.5 million, accounting for almost half of all phone sales.

Quarterly Android shipments came in at a shade under 150 million, accounting for 34 percent of all mobile phone shipments and 69 percent of smartphones.

Android’s market share did, however, dip sequentially from 74 percent as Apple’s share grew from 15 percent to 22 percent following the launch of the iPhone 5 in the quarter. BlackBerry and Windows Phone shares remained unchanged sequentially at 3.5 percent and 2.4 percent respectively.

In terms of individual vendors, Samsung grew quarterly sales by 78 percent, while the Chinese vendors Huawei, ZTE, Lenovo and Yulong all grew by triple-digit percentages.

“Vendors left in the wake of the top vendors must at the very least improve their portfolios, time-to-market and marketing, as well as communicate their differentiators,” said Canalys’ Principal Analyst Pete Cunningham. “Microsoft, BlackBerry and other new OS entrants, such as Mozilla, must make the OS switch as simple as possible and drive and localise their respective app and content ecosystems.”