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Android dominates smartphones globally, Apple and Blackberry drift

Stockhouse Editorial

0 Comments| August 7, 2013

By Chris Parry, Stockhouse.com

Apple’s (NASDAQ:APPL, Stock Forum) iPhone may be synonymous with the smartphone world, but the reality on the ground shows we live in an Android-dominated world, so says research by the International Data Corporation (IDC) that shows the Google-backed (NASDAQ:GOOG, Stock Forum) operating system with a 79.3% market share.

236.4 million smartphones were shipped to market in the second quarter of 2013 globally, up 51.3% from a year earlier and up 9% from the first quarter, and the Android operating system powered the top-selling Samsung (OTO:SSNLF, Stock Forum) Galaxy S4, as well as phones from LG (GREY:LGEAF, Stock Forum) and Chinese companies Huawei, ZTE and Lenovo (OTO:LNVGF, Stock Forum).

Apple’s iOS, the operating system powering the iPhone, has a solid, if dropping, 13.2% market share of new smartphone shipments (down from 16.6% a year prior), though sales are up 20% in the same time period with 31.2m units shipped.

Microsoft’s (NASDAQ:MSFT, Stock Forum) Windows Phone registered a 77.6% jump in shipments year over year, at 3.7% of market share, up from 3.1% in 2Q12. In all, 8.7m Windows phones were moved in the quarter.

Blackberry (T.BB, NASDAQ:BBRY, Stock Forum) OS, in the same time period, dropped both in number of phones shipped (6.8m, down from 7.7m) and share (2.9%, down from 4.9%), with Linux, Symbian and other phones fighting over scraps.

Blackberry’s new Bold, Q10 and Z10 units have struggled to catch on with consumers, leading to restructuring at the Ontario-based electronics giant Research in Motion, though a dedicated core of users continues to cheerlead the line.

Apple is expected to release its iOS 7 operating system update later in the year in the hope of driving a bump in sales, but the new OS is said to be a fairly radical rethink of the software, which may in fact give long time users fresh comfort in switching to a new system.

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