In a report examining quarterly mobile devices sales, research firm Gartner found that sales of mobile devices in 2Q 2010 have increased by nearly 14% compared to a year ago, with smartphone sales accounting for 19% of worldwide device sales.
What’s interesting in the report is that Android-based devices leaped past Apple’s iPhone to become the third most popular operating system worldwide and analysts expect it to become number two. In the U.S. alone, Android passed the BlackBerry to a 34.1 percent market share, up from just 3.9 percent a year ago. Just a year ago Android accounted for under 2% of the smartphone market worldwide, with just 755,900 units. Today, Gartner says that Android accounts for 17% of the market with more than 10 million units. The extraordinary growth of the Android is the result of the non-exclusive strategy adapted by Google to sell its operating system across many communication service providers and device manufacturers. Moreover, Android OS now runs on HTC, LG, Motorola, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, and many others.
With Apple’s sales hurt by the tight inventory management, the blocking of RIM services worldwide and carriers heavily promoting Android devices, it seems that Android will easily replace RIM as second most popular operating system worldwide.
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This is compared to the number of handsets that use the Android. The iOS has only the Apple manufactured handsets. While the Android has multiple handsets manufactured by different companies.
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Exactly, and that the smart thing Google did is that they offered their Android operating system for free to device manufacturers. Now manufacturer’s care less about developing operating systems as they offer the Android and spend the money they saved on RD and developing new devices.
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Does RIM sell their OS to someone else?
Their OS market share is almost 20%, but their smartphone share is 3.4%.
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FAISAL Reply:
August 16th, 2010 at 4:57 pm
Great point naser, unless most of RIM’s phones arent considered smart phones, which doesn’t make sense either
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Sal Reply:
August 17th, 2010 at 3:12 am
I just updated the table its supposed to be mobile devices, not smartphones
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The “Worldwide Smartphone Share Sales to End Users” is misleading. This is what the Tech specialist at our co conveyed to me. It seems Nokia tweaked the definition of a “Smartphone” to its advantage. Nokia is dead. Their definition of smartphones is so broad it includes all phones that do anything more than a call!
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Sal Reply:
August 17th, 2010 at 3:11 am
True, it was a typo from my end. Its supposed to be worldwide mobile device sales (regular devices and smartphones combined)
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True- Although I believe that Android will obviously be the number 1 smart phone in 2 years from now, it’s worth noting that only 1 week of iPhone 4 sales is included in this study.
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Interesting! it’ll just be a matter of time until Kuwait catches up with this fad…
i used googles first G1 phone for over a year with all telecom companies rejecting to work on my phone to provide me with internet service, yet i was still in love with the phone
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At this stage in the game i would really consider shorting Apple!
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Keynesian Reply:
August 19th, 2010 at 12:29 pm
Replying to a previous post by “SAL” I wrote the following:
“An interesting piece was published by GS stipulating that historically speaking the biggest weighted company in the NASDAQ has always underperformed the index. Microsoft and Cisco are prime examples. Guess what? Since Apple became the biggest component on the NASDAQ it has underperformed.”
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its really great to see Android rising up…!
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