Android has taken smartphone market like storm, growing its market share from mere 9 per cent in 1st quarter of 2010 to 36 per cent in the last quarter, an increase of four times.
According to Gartners latest report on worldwide smartphone sales, Android is the market leader followed by fast declining Symbian. RIM is another looser which lost substantial market share to Android.
Symbian, the erstwhile market leader, is losing marketshare especially after Nokia changed track and adopted Windows Phone 7 as its preferred operating system. In 2010, Symbian had 44.2 per cent market share in smartphone segment, which has now reduced to 27.4 per cent.
On the other hand, Apple’s iOS gained market share slightly to 16.8 per cent with its super successful iPhone4.
BlackBerry maker RIM continued its slide downhill and has now only 12.9 per cent market share, down from 19.7 per cent. While its new tablet Playbook has been received well, it has failed to attract buyers despite attempts to attract non-executive young buyers.
Microsoft, which has got a big moral boost after Nokia selected Windows Phone 7 as the choice of operating system for its smartphones, has not been able to cash in on the deal so far as it prepares for onslaught once Nokia starts shipping WP7 devices.
Microsoft has 3.6 per cent market share compared to last year’s 6.8 per cent, It has announced a massive upgrade with ‘Anna’ which will bring in more than 500 changes to WP7, and hopes to change the buyers preference.
According to the Gartner report, total smartphone sales worldwide for this quarter stands at a whopping 428 million units, which means a 19 per cent year on year growth for the industry. This also means that every player sold more smartphones this quarter compared to the same quarter last year. Even Symbian which lost 17 per cent in market share managed to sell 3 million more handsets this quarter compared to 1st quarter last year.