Google's Android operating system claimed a commanding share of the global smartphone 
market in the second quarter, Gartner reported Thursday. Android accounted for 43.4 percent of all smartphone shipments in the three months through June -- a dramatic rise from the mobile platform's 17.2 percent market share in the year-earlier period.
Smartphone shipments in the U.S. mobile handset market exceeded non-smartphone sales for the very first time, noted Hugues de la Vergne, Gartner's principal analyst for mobile-device research in North America. "Sales continue to be dominated by Android and Apple's iOS operating systems," he said.
In North America, iOS and Android accounted for a combined 83.5 percent of total smartphone sales, de la Vergne observed. "RIM's sales continue to fall quickly as Android takes market share at AT&T ," de la Vergne explained. "Android has also grown in prepaid operators as Huawei's sell-through of their $99 Android phone has been extremely strong."
Robust Smartphone Growth
Second-quarter smartphone shipments overall rose 74 percent year over year on a global basis and accounted for 25 percent of all mobile handset sales -- up from 17 percent in the same quarter in 2010. Smartphone sales cannibalized feature-phone shipments somewhat as consumers in mature markets purchased more entry-level and midrange Android models due to carriers' and manufacturers' promotions and other factors, noted Roberta Cozza, Gartner's principal analyst for mobile-device research in Europe.
Apple's iOS and Google's Android collectively doubled their combined market share to nearly 62 percent in comparison with the year-earlier period. Both platforms currently feature "the usability that consumers enjoy, the apps that consumers feel they need, and increasingly a portfolio of services delivered by the platform owner as well," Gartner's analysts explained.
Apple claimed an 18.2 percent share of the global smartphone market in the second quarter -- up from 14.1 percent a year earlier. The result exceeded prior expectations among industry analysts that iPhone 4 sales would decline in advance of a widely anticipated iPhone refresh this autumn.
The iPhone's robust sales during the second quarter were due in major part to the agreements that Apple signed with 42 new carriers in the second quarter as well as the device maker's entry into 15 new national markets in the three months through June. In mainland China, for example, Apple is the seventh-largest mobile-phone vendor and the third-largest smartphone vendor, Gartner analysts noted. (continued...)
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