According to the latest stats from research firm IDC, Google’s Android OS dominated Q3 2012 with a massive 75% worldwide market share. That’s mind boggling considering the OS has only been around for four years. Google’s OS was present on 136 million devices shipped in Q3, up from 71 million a year ago, a boost of 91.5% year-over-year. Apart from RIM and Apple, most smartphone manufactures have produced a wide variety of handsets that run on Android.
Coming in a distant second was Apple’s iOS with 14.9% of the smartphone market. That is also impressive as Apple has only three phones in production, the iPhone 4, 4S and 5.
Coming in 3rd place is RIM – who hasn’t come out with a new smartphone in over a year – and they captured 4.3% of the market, significantly dropping of 34.7% over last year. Hopefully RIM’s tune will change when they launch their new BB10 devices in early 2013.
Nokia’s Symbian squeaked in with 2.3% market share, meanwhile Microsoft’s Windows Mobile/Windows Phone rose 140% over the year to take hold of 2% of the market, but have failed to grab the buyers attention. This might shift with all their new WP8 handset coming out in a couple weeks.
Overall the 181.1 million smartphone shipments in Q3 and the market increased by an astounding 46.4% from last year. Ramon Llamas of IDC stated “Android has been one of the primary growth engines of the smartphone market since it was launched in 2008. In every year since then, Android has effectively outpaced the market and taken market share from the competition.”
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