Android Officially Owns More Than 80% Of The World Smartphone Market

Android has hit a new milestone of popularity: it now owns 81% of the world smartphone market, according to a new market research report from IDC.

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 smartphones and 212 million were Android, IDC said. Apple sold nearly 34 million iPhones.

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)

^{Source: IDC.}