Kevin Bostic
Google's Android operating system continues to dominate the smartphone segment in terms of shipped devices, with an 80 percent share in the latest quarter according to new data, while Apple's iPhone accounts for less and less of shipments in a growing market.
Industry tracker IDC released its latest numbers on Wednesday, showing that Android was the operating system on 187.4 million of the 236.4 million smartphone units shipped in the second quarter. That equates to a 79.3 percent share for the quarter, up from 69.1 percent for the same quarter a year ago.
Meanwhile, Apple's iOS platform was on 31.2 million iPhones shipped, up from the 26 million Apple shipped one year ago. The market itself grew faster than Apple's shipments, though, and so Apple's share fell from 16.6 percent for the second quarter 2012 to 13.2 percent for this quarter.
Microsoft's Windows Phone platform saw a sizable boost in shipments — going from 4.9 million in 2012 to 8.7 million in the past quarter — but only a slight uptick in terms of share, growing from 3.1 percent to 3.7 percent. BlackBerry continued to struggle in the quarter, shipping fewer handsets even as its market share slipped.
IDC's findings are largely in keeping with those of Canalys, which also found Android's lead over all other challengers to be increasing. Released yesterday, Canalys' figures differ from IDC's by only a few million units in a few categories.
Apple's share of phone shipments may be on the downturn, but the Cupertino company remains the top profit maker in the segment. According to the most recent numbers, Apple accounts for 57 percent of profits in the smartphone business. The only other firm making a profit in the market, so far, is Samsung, which accounts for the other 43 percent.
IDC's numbers show Samsung having shipped 73.3 million handsets in the past quarter, up from 48 million units one year ago. The South Korean conglomerate accounts for nearly 40 percent of shipped Android smartphones. That figure is actually down, though, from the 44.4 percent share it held last year. The other top five Android manufacturers by units shipped were LG, Lenovo, Huawei, and ZTE.
Charles Martin
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148 Comments
I don't think Tim Cook and company are worried by these numbers. Apple has a lot of new product coming and that will push the needle back in their favor. Normally when a new iPhone comes, sales double. This year with the possibility of 2 new iPhone models, I think we could easily see iPhone sales triple. I expect the most robust increases will come from emerging markets with the affordable iPhone eating all the competition up.
[quote name="blackbook" url="/t/158941/android-on-80-of-smartphones-shipped-in-q2-while-apples-iphone-took-13#post_2375854"]I don't think Tim Cook and company are too worried by these numbers. Apple has a lot of new product coming that will push the needle back in their favor.[/quote] Not really. I'm not sure Apple will ever have the majority. It's not surprising that there are a lot of cheap phones sold, but Apple doesn't care about them.
Fewer and fewer. Please.
I LOVE these numbers.
Something very cool about NOT being the mainstream.
I always loved Apple products, but also their underdog, not mainstream, aura.
That is what makes certain products very desirable.
That EVERYONE doesn't have them.
GO APPLE
Full Disclosure:
AAPL Share holder.
It certainly looks like Android has already win "the game". I didn't expect that Windows-Mac history to repeat again. At least not as fast! And it looks like in 2-3 years Windows will catch iOS! Can Apple turn the ship around? I doubt. They've just lost so many oportunities. They were kings 2-3 years ago and now...