Remember when Android actually had some competition from rival mobile
operating systems?
Those days are now long gone, as
some fresh findings from Strategy Analytics make clear.
In the third quarter, a record 88% of all smartphones around the world were running on
Google's mobile OS, according to the research firm.
And, Android’s gains are definitely coming at the expense of
rival platforms. In the third quarter, in fact, Apple’s iOS fell to a 12% share of the global mobile OS marketplace.
Meanwhile, “BlackBerry and
Microsoft Windows Phone have all but disappeared due to strategic shifts, while Tizen and other emerging platforms softened as a result of limited product portfolios and modest developer
support,” Neil Mawston, executive director of Strategy Analytics, notes in the report.
As such, “Android’s leadership of the global
smartphone market looks unassailable at the moment," Woody Oh, director at Strategy Analytics, comments in the report. “Its low-cost services and user-friendly software remain attractive to
hardware makers, operators and consumers worldwide.”
Yet, among other challenges, “The Android
platform is getting overcrowded with hundreds of manufacturers, few Android device vendors make profits, and Google’s new Pixel range is attacking its own hardware partners that made Android
popular in the first place,” Oh warned.
Altogether, global
smartphone shipments reached 375 million units in the third quarter of the year, which represented an annual increase of about 6%.
This was the smartphone industry’s fastest growth rate for a year, by the
research firm’s reckoning.