• by Aaron Baar , February 2, 2015

BlackBerry and Windows mobile users are a fading breed (and the two operating systems are fading brands), as Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android account for nearly all of the smartphone market. 

According to Consumer Intelligence Research Partners, iOS and Android accounted for 95% of mobile phone activations during the fourth quarter of 2014, following a similar trend of the previous three. While the anecdotal evidence hinted at the fading power of BlackBerry and Windows, the data puts a number on how far behind the two brands have fallen. 

“They’ve become small niche OS at very best,” Mike Levin, partner and co-founder of CIRP, tells Marketing Daily about the two operating systems. “Consumer habits have solidified, and Apple and Google aren’t standing still in improving their OS.”

Although Windows and basic phones had greater activations than BlackBerry, the number still amounts to a “margin of sampling error,” notes CIRP co-founder Josh Lowitz. Even worse for those brands, loyalty among operating system is very sticky, he says, at 80% for iOS and Android users. 

“Think of the image of the last BlackBerry customers clinging to their Bolds and Curves,” Lowitz says. “Now that iOS and Android have gained these dominant shares and there are fewer first-time smartphone buyers entering the market, it becomes increasingly difficult for another operating system to gain significant share.”

In fact, the shares have become so low, the companies may want to look to getting out of the smartphone game entirely, and turn their focus to emerging categories such as the connected devices and automobiles, Levin says. But they’d better turn that focus quickly. ‘

“Apple and Google continue to innovate there, too. Especially Google,” he notes.