That's not a huge jump. It was knocking on the door of 80% market share last quarter, when it hit 79.3 percent. But the growing dominance of Android is still impressive, especially considering that the smartphone market as a whole grew wildly. It's up 40% over Q3 2012, IDC says.
In Q3 2013, people worldwide bought 261 million
Not surprisingly, the low-cost Android phone is why Android is so popular. But the irony is that most Android phone makers except Samsung are struggling to get a measurable bite of this huge pie. IDC notes:
Samsung accounted for 39.9% of all Android shipments for the quarter, while the rest of the vendors either saw single-digit market share or, in the case of the majority of vendors, market share of less than 1%.
Here's a breakdown of the quarter.
Top Four Operating Systems, Shipments, and Market Share, Q3 2013 (Units in Millions)
Operating System |
3Q13 Shipment Volumes |
3Q13 Market Share |
3Q12 Shipment Volumes |
3Q12 Market Share |
Year-Over-Year Change |
Android |
211.6 |
81.0% |
139.9 |
74.9% |
51.3% |
iOS |
33.8 |
12.9% |
26.9 |
14.4% |
25.6% |
Windows Phone |
9.5 |
3.6% |
3.7 |
2.0% |
156.0% |
BlackBerry |
4.5 |
1.7% |
7.7 |
4.1% |
-41.6% |
Others |
1.7 |
0.6% |
8.4 |
4.5% |
-80.1% |
Total |
261.1 |
100.0% |
186.7 |
100.0% |
39.9% |