Analysis of recent sales figures suggest that US Android handset sales dipped in the second quarter while iOS went up, according market research firm to Strategy Analytics. Overall smartphone shipments across all manufacturers fell five percent to 23.8 million, compared to 25.2 million for the same quarter last year. The lower sales were believed to be due to a combination of the volatile economy and changes in upgrade policies by major carriers.
Android sales in Q2 2011 totalled 15.3 million, and took up 60.6 percent of the market. This year, despite the launch of such handsets as the Samsung Galaxy S III, Android had only managed 13.4 million sales, making 56.3 percent of market share, a drop of almost two million handsets over the period.
The only platform that did not drop in terms of sales was iOS, which rose by almost exactly the same amount Android lost — two million units — to reach 7.9 million units sold. This also increased Apple’s market share from 23.2 percent to 33.2 percent, despite rumors of a sixth-generation iPhone having a negative impact on sales.
The other single-manufacturer platform, Blackberry OS, lost over a million sales and shrank to 1.6 million, or 6.5 percent of the current market. This is believed to be RIM’s lowest market share in recent history.
