After passing Research In Motion to become the world’s No. 3 smartphone maker, Apple’s iOS is in striking distance of another once-great mobile phone maker, Symbian. During the second quarter, iOS rose to 18.2 percent of the global market while the Symbian platform shed nearly half of its 2010 strength.
After dropping to just 22 percent of the global market, down from 40 percent of smartphone sales during the second quarter of 2010, Symbian is likely to soon give up its No. 2 position to Apple. Thursday, Nokia announced Symbian is essentially dead in the United States.
Another once-great mobile brand, BlackBerry-maker RIM, also received bad news from Gartner’s quarterly report on smartphone sales. RIM, which has bad-mouthed Apple all the way to the poorhouse, lost seven percent of its marketshare. The company fell to 11.7 percent of global smartphone sales, down from 18.7 percent during the second quarter last year.
In a sign of the growing strength of Samsung’s new Bada smartphone OS, Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 – Nokia’s lifeboat – lost to the new OS; 2 million Bada-based smartphones sold during the second quarter, up from just a bit more than half a million units in 2010. By comparison, Microsoft sold just 1.7 million Windows Phone 7 handsets during the second quarter, down from 3 million in 2010.
If that’s who lost smartphone market share, who’s taking up the slack? The usual: iOS and Android. Apple’s global market share rose to 18.2 percent, up from 14.1 percent a year ago, on twice as many units sold: 19.6 million versus 8.7 million, according to Gartner.
Google continued its dramatic rise as Android-based smartphones controlled 43.4 percent of smartphones during the second quarter, up from 17.2 percent during the same period in 2010.
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
16 responses to “iOS, Android Are Gobbling Up The Smartphone Market”
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ooh, some sloppy writing here. like “… Microsoft sold just 1.7 million Windows Phone 7 handsets …” no it did not. MS sells Windows Phone licenses, not handsets. and “Google continued its dramatic rise …” no, the many OEM’s using its giveaway Android OS sold those units to retain, not “Gobble Up” market share.
this isn’t nitpicking. OEM’s and telcos drive this industry. and there is no Android Phone Co. OEM’s without their own in-house OS have to use one of the commodity OS’ – and Android and Windows Phone are the only two left now that Symbian is about to come to a screeching halt. so the total market share of the commodity OS”s went from 63.0% last year to 67.1% now. which is not a huge change (due mainly to RIM’s decline) and means that essentially Android is pretty much simply supplanting Symbian and Wndows Phone among the OEM’s without their own OS.
so charts like this showing sales by OEM’s instead of OS platforms tell the real story. there we know Apple is now tops, followed by Samsung and then a fading RIM, with HTC coming up. and of those four, only one was’t making any phones 5 years ago – you know who. that’s the real story.
the one surprise in these numbers is the almost total collapse of Windows Phone/Mobile. losing 2/3 of your licensing market share in one year is devastating. it’s now very close to a <1% market share which = dead. and by the time Nokia finally brings Windows Phones to market next year to replace its Symbian models, it won’t have anything near a 22% market share left to shift over to it either. at this rate of decline it will be closer to 5%. The MS/Nokia deal looks more and more like a partnership of the doomed.
How do you figure that Apple is on top? There are more than twice as many Android devices. Android has also grown much faster due to the fact it is open source and they don’t feel the need to lock your phone down and tell you how you should use it. The iphone has far inferior technology compared to Android devices. They are also just now releasing features in ios5 that have been in android for a long time, for example a notification bar.
you must have misunderstood. last quarter, Apple sold more smartphones than any other single company, period. simple fact.
you like Android stuff better, that’s your business.
Could you please explain how they sold more? I don’t understand how 19,628 is greater than 46,775? and if you go by percent increased, android rose 26.2% and apple rose 4.1% I’m not trying to argue, I just honestly don’t see where you are getting apple sold more from?
can you read? Android does not = “single company.” Samsung does, Motorola does. etc. and Nokia’s totals include all their feature phones.
Android is a platform, not a company. and it’s a fragmented one too. not everything you can buy – both apps and hardware – is backwards, or even forwards, compatible across all devices and OS generations even tho it is just over 2 years old.
Yes I can read, thanks. My point is the chart is based on OS. Just because android is sold by several manufactures does not mean it is selling any less. If a single company produced android phones, they would still outnumber iphones. However, I will agree with you on the point of fragmentation which needs to be fixed.
fine. but when you reply to someone’s comments, deal with what they wrote, not something else elsewhere in the thread.