Android Scored Record 81% Market Share In 2013 Q3

Strategy Analytics has released its third quarter Android smartphone shipment numbers, and in them we see a new victory for Google's mobile OS: a record 81-percent global market share, something it has scored in light of BlackBerry and Apple failings. Microsoft has also had a strong third quarter, with the numbers showing a doubling of Windows Phone market share, making it the fastest growing big-name smartphone platform in the world.

Overall, global smartphone shipments total 251 million units in the third quarter of this year, a growth of 45-percent when compared to 2012's Q3 172.8 million units. Though both demand for Android and Windows Phone drove the high numbers, it was primarily Asia and Europe developed and developing markets that were responsible. Breaking down the numbers, Android now runs on four of every five smartphones.

Microsoft shipped in excess of 10 million smartphones globally this past quarter, a record for the company, with its market share doubling from 2-percent to 4-percent over the past year. This past quarter marks a 178-percent smartphone shipments increase, which is what has now earned it the designation of fastest growing major smartphone platform. The reasons for the strong quarter for Google and Microsoft are relatively simple.

Strategy Analytics Senior Analyst Scott Bicheno said: "Android's gain came mainly at the expense of BlackBerry, which saw its global smartphone share dip from 4 percent to 1 percent in the past year due to a weak line-up of BB10 devices. Apple also lost some ground to Android because of its limited presence at the lower end of the smartphone market. Android will need to take further shipments from Apple if it wants to keep growing in the future, but this is unlikely in the near-term as the new iPhone 5s model is proving popular and it will help Apple to regain volumes worldwide in the fourth quarter of 2013."