Onwards and upwards
Android has led the market for the second quarter in a row where it increased its share to 35 percent, according to research firm Canalys.
The figures show that Asia-Pacific region is by far the largest maker of smartphones, having doubled in size with a year-on-year growth of 98 percent to 37.3 million units. This puts it ahead of Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) for the first time since Q3 2007. The report also said the market for more advanced smartphones grew 83 percent from a year ago in the January-to-March quarter to 101 million phones.
While the Android platform increased its market share to 35 percent from less than 10 percent just a year earlier, the report noted that Nokia's Symbian saw its market share dropping to 26 percent from 45 percent. Even RIM's worldwide share dropped to 14 percent compared to 19 percent a year ago. RIM's share dropped in the first quarter, as the vendor started focusing on the PlayBook launch.
Principal analyst Pete Cunningham, noted that "HTC, Samsung, LG, Motorola and Sony Ericsson drove Android shipments in the first quarter, with each vendor shipping well over 3 million devices."
Observing that Samsung also shipped nearly 3.5 million bada operating system-based smart phones, he concluded that "this achievement shows that there is still room for multiple operating systems, and that vendors can benefit from maintaining control of device development to hit the right markets and price points."
Interestingly, Android has remained the leading smart phone platform in the US for the third consecutive quarter, with a 49 percent share. Growing by well over 200 percent, HTC became the leading Android vendor in the US and the second-place smart phone vendor in the country overall.
Learning that the popularity of 4G-branded phones heavily influenced the US market last quarter, Canalys VP Chris Jones said "Shipments of HTC's EVO series, Inspire 4G and Thunderbolt enhanced its strong performance in this quarter."
