Android Is Now Almost Half The Smartphone Market

Symbian's rapid decline was confirmed by the latest quarterly handset figures from research firm Canalys, which show Android snatching almost half of shipments during Q2. Apple iOS also managed to leapfrog Symbian, taking 19% of shipments.

Focal Points:

• Canalys calculates that 51.9m Android phones shipped during the quarter, out of a total of 108.1m. The Android figure was up almost fivefold compared to the year-ago quarter, and Android was the most popular OS in 35 of the 56 countries that Canalys surveyed. Apple gained almost 19% share based on 20.3m shipments million iPhones, which put it ahead of Symbian for the first time. That achievement also made Apple the top individual smartphone vendor in the world, as seen in other surveys, pushing Nokia off the top spot and narrowly ahead of Samsung. Apple remains more successful in the US than elsewhere, with 28% of that market.


• The Google OS first came out top in the Canalys survey in the fourth quarter of 2010, when it gained 32% share of shipments, up from just 9% the year earlier. At that time, Symbian was on 30.6%, having nosedived from 44.4% in the last quarter of 2009. 


• Apple may be losing out somewhat in volume terms - though the iPhone 5 should give it a boost in the last quarter - but it is the star of the show in terms of profitability. According to another report, by Canaccord Genuity, Apple took home a huge 57% of the total operating profits of the cellphone business in the second quarter, despite having only a 5.4% share of the overall handset space. This figure was up from 51% in Q111 and 41% in 2010.

Editor’s Note – While we all expect that there will be market shifts as time goes on, the factors for the shift are interesting to note, namely ability to deliver high-demand functions and features. Android was designed to cater to this consumer demand market and as such it is taking a large slice of marketshare. Throughout technology history (1940 and on) software releases became popular because of the functions and features they supported. The big difference is that back in the 1980’s changes in direction took place every two years. Now it seems that change in direction happen every 3 months or less.

IT executives need to make sure that whatever strategic partnerships they engage in, they need to clearly understand the vendor’s roadmap and how that aligns with the direction that your organization needs to go.