IDC: Android jumps to 68.1% global market share, iOS slips to 16.9%

According to IDC, Android and iOS now represent 85% of the 152 million smartphones sold in Q2 2012, globally. But while the iPhone kept growing in raw numbers, it couldn’t keep up with Android, and its market share slipped from 18.8% to 16.9%.  The iPhone has always been around 20% market share or lower globally, and with the upcoming iPhone coming out soon, it’s not that surprising that its sales would fall.

On the other hand, Android has simply kept on growing, and its global market share is inching closer towards passing the 70% mark, now being at 68.1%. It doesn’t seem like there’s anything stopping Android from going past the 80% mark either, seeing how it’s already reached that in China, and my guess is it’s going to stop growing in market share around that point, which is almost as big as Windows’ market share in PC market. By then, Android would have reached its goal of becoming the “Windows of PC’s”.

 

Ironically, Windows Phone 7 is far from reaching that point, being currently at only 3.5%, including old Windows Mobile OS devices in this number. Blackberry has lost even more market share, dropping from 11.5% to 4.8%. I don’t even want to think about what kind of market share RIM will have by the time it launches BB10 in 2013. Even a partnership with Samsung might not save the Canadian company.
If you thought the Blackberry OS decline was large, the decline of Symbian was even larger, dropping from 16.9% to 4.4%. At this rate, by next quarter, it will be smaller than WP7′s market share. Nokia’s market share seems to have disappeared into thin air, as almost none of the Symbian users converted to Nokia’s WP7 – just compare Nokia’s 30%+ market share in most countries at the time of announcing the deal with Microsoft, to the 4.4% market share Symbian has now, and to the 3.5% total WP7 market share (including HTC, Samsung, etc).
Of course it didn’t actually disappear into thin air. The vast majority of Symbian users have switched to Android and iOS, because for “Symbian users,” who are used to having advanced functionality in their mobile OS, the transition to Android or iOS makes a whole lot more sense than moving to the much more limited WP7, especially when it comes to 3rd party apps.
It will be interesting to see how the next iPhone’s launch will affect Android’s global numbers, but I doubt it will affect them that much, since the iPhone probably won’t even launch in all the countries at the same time. And I doubt it can match Android’s growth in countries like China, India or even Spain.

SOURCES IDC

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