Android-powered smartphones extended their lead in the global marketplace in the third quarter, helped by growth in emerging markets, according to a new survey released this week.
The Google-powered operating system was used in 84.7% of smartphones sold worldwide in the quarter, up from 83.3% a year earlier, the Gartner survey showed. Apple and its iOS operating system, meanwhile, lifted its market share to 13.1% from 12.5% a year ago.
The two dominant systems left little for Windows Phone, which saw its market share slip to 1.7% from 3%, and Blackberry, down to 0.3% from 0.8%.
Smartphone sales grew 15.5% in the July-September period to 353 million units, with Android accounting for more than 298 million and Apple 46 million, Gartner noted. But most of the growth was in emerging markets, where sales were up 18.4% compared with 8.2% for “mature markets,” according to the survey.
“The availability of affordable smartphones in emerging markets saw consumers upgrade their ‘feature phones’ to smartphones more quickly because of the small price gap,” said Anshul Gupta, Gartner research director.
Samsung kept its spot as the No. 1 vendor with a 23.7% market share to 13.1% for No. 2 Apple.
China’s Huawei leapt into third place with a share of 7.7%, on the back of a 71% year-on-year sales jump, Gartner found.
Rival Chinese handset markets Lenovo and Xiaomi were in a virtual tie for fourth place with a 4.9% market share, Gartner said.
Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2015
