Smartphone sales rose by a half over the last three months, according to market analysts Gartner. As a result, the Web-friendly devices now make up nearly 20% of all phones sold.
"Of
the 326 million handsets that Gartner reckons were sold in the last three months, 19 percent fall into the smartphone category, with Symbian's share of that category now down to 41 per cent and
Android taking up the slack,"
The Register notes.
"People around the world are snapping up mobile gadgets at a
good clip -- sales shot up 13.8 percent worldwide in the second quarter compared to a year ago,"
writes USAToday.
Meanwhile,
Google's Android platform is now the most popular smartphone software in the U.S., overtaking Apple Inc.'s iPhone and the BlackBerry from Research In Motion Ltd., according to Gartner.
"That's quite the feat when you consider that a year ago the latter was shifting ten times more units than the former,"
remarks Engadget.
The Android operating system has outpaced sales of Apple
software in the U.S. and abroad this year because it's available on a wider array of phones and carriers,"
notes Bloomberg, citing the wisdom of unnamed analysts. "The two
operating systems are competing for share of smartphone sales, which gained 50.5 percent in the quarter. That's more than three times the growth for the market as a whole."
"As
competitors eat into RIM's North American market share, the Canadian company has increasingly been pushed to look to markets like India and Saudi Arabia for growth,"
Reuters reports. "But security demands made by some foreign governments have landed RIM at the center of international controversy in
recent weeks."
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