liniment frederik: Canalys: Android accounts for 70% of smartphone market and 34% of all phones shipped in Q4 2012

Thursday, February 7, 2013

Canalys: Android accounts for 70% of smartphone market and 34% of all phones shipped in Q4 2012

Android Army

Canalys is in the business of counting things. Things like how many of each make of smartphone gets shipped, and what operating system runs on them. We're glad they do it so we don't have to, and they do a great job keeping everyone abreast of how the market breaks out for each category they measure by. They have released the tally for Q4 2012, and as expected, Android continues to dominate the market. In Q4 of last year, 70-percent of all smartphones shipped were running some flavor of Android on them. If you've been following along, you're not surprised.

What is surprising is some of the other facts one can get from their latest report. Like the fact that of all phones shipped during the quarter Android was running on 34-percent of them. That means that one of every three phones sold are smartphones running Android, and that's important. Android was designed to get the Internet into the hands of the people. To get the to ditch their "dumb" phones (I hate that label) and step up into an entry level smartphone. Seeing Android at 34-percent of the total means that people are doing just that -- ditching the old messaging phone for something more fitting the 21st century. These are the phones we forget about, or ask "why?" when we see them getting released. We shouldn't. They are important phones for the future of Android.

Another little-talked about fact from today's report? Huawei is now in the number three spot (behind Samsung and Apple, in that order) of smart phones shipped. Look out for them -- they will be coming in hard and have some awesome things to show us.

For the rest of the numbers and where everyone places in the race for market share, hit the source link and check out the report.

Source: canalys