There's no hope of anyone catching up to Android and iOS

When you go to buy a smartphone, you basically have two choices: Android, or iOS. This is the way it's been for the better part of the decade, but now, any hope of a third mobile OS driving competition against those two behemoths is dead and buried.

This chart from Statista shows why. As noted by a new report from research firm Gartner, Android and iOS now account for 99.1% of the worldwide smartphone market. (With Android well out in front.) Their closest competitors, Windows 10 Mobile and BlackBerry OS, make up 0.6% and 0.1%, respectively. Both of those figures are down slightly from where they were earlier this year.

Again, this isn't a surprise. Though new Windows phones are still being made, Microsoft has steadily backed away from the platform, focusing instead on improving its software suite on Android and iOS. BlackBerry, meanwhile, now makes Android devices that come bundled with its legacy apps. Either way, when it comes to mobile software, we're all completely reliant on Google and Apple to keep things moving.

Statista