Android-powered smartphones accounted for 68.1 percent of all smartphones shipped in the second quarter of this year. This according to new numbers out from the International Data Corporation, which found that Google and Apple’s operating systems, when taken together, accounted for 85 percent of the smartphone market. IDC’s numbers also reflected the declining share of Nokia’s defunct Symbian platform and Research in Motion’s troubled BlackBerry OS.
The report bestows much of the credit for Android’s market success on Samsung, which accounted for 44 percent of all Q2 Android smartphone shipments. Samsung’s remarkable sales in the quarter totaled more than the next seven Android vendors’ volumes put together.
The report also noted the growing install base for Android 4.0, which is now said to be on one out of every six phones running Android.
Apple’s iOS showed double-digit growth, but it did not outpace the market on the whole. IDC’s report sees demand for Apple’s iPhone 4S having cooled off in recent months as consumers anticipate the next model arriving some time in the fall. On the whole, though iOS’ 16.9 percent Q2 market share was more than all of the other non-Android operating systems put together.
BlackBerry OS and Symbian saw 40.9 and 62.9 percent drops in market share, respectively. Nokia has abandoned Symbian, but RIM is currently at work on a new version of its BlackBerry OS, one it hopes will help the company return to its previous prominence in the mobile sector.
Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform saw 115.3 percent growth year-over-year, and it accounted for 5.4 percent of all Q2 smartphone shipments. IDC attributes this jump almost entirely to the relative success of Nokia’s Lumia line. The future of the platform will, of course, depend heavily on the impact of Windows Phone 8, which will launch in the fall of this year.
