Android gaining market share

Android’s open strategy seems to be working very well, winning the platform enough support to drive 886 per cent growth in the smartphone space between the second quarter of 2010 and the same period in 2009.

Fair enough, the figures are a little misleading because Android had a miniscule market share in the second quarter of 2009 but the platform has won strong support from the vendor community with key products shipping from HTC, Motorola, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and LG.

As it stands, according to figures from research house Canalys, Android shipped on 10.7 million units in the second quarter, winning the OS a market share of 17.1 per cent in the smartphone space. That’s a strong showing, putting the OS just behind RIM’s BlackBerry platform with 18 per cent of the smartphone market.

Symbian was still the clear leader during the second quarter however, holding onto 43.5 per cent of the market with 27.12 million shipments. Although both Symbian and RIM saw their market share shrink year on year despite more handsets being shipped.

Some of the pressure is coming from Apple, which experienced 61 per cent growth, with shipments up from 5.2 million to 8.4 million during the second quarter, although market share dipped very slightly from 13.7 per cent to 13.5 per cent.

The analyst notes that while Nokia (the main proponent of Symbian) retained a substantial lead in the worldwide smart phone market with an overall 38 per cent market share, with a record 23.8 million smartphones shipped during the quarter, its market dominance is not as unassailable as it once was, with its performance outpaced by growth in the sector as a whole.

The smartphone market grew 64 per cent annually worldwide between the end of 2Q10 and 2Q09. BlackBerry shipments grew 41 per cent over the same period giving RIM 18 per cent market share, while shipments of the iPhone 4 contributed to Apple’s 61 per cent growth and worldwide market share of 13 per cent for the quarter.

Microsoft was the only bearer of bad news, with shipments sinking from 3.4 million to just over three million, halving the firm’s market share to 4.9 per cent in the second quarter.

In related news, a preview of the Intel-Nokia Linux mashup, known as MeeGo, has been leaked onto YouTube. MeeGo was unveiled at Barcelona in February as a merger of Intel and Nokia’s respective Linux initiatives, to create a software platform spanning a range of consumer electronics from mobile phones to netbooks.

Intel is contributing its Moblin platform, which will be merged with Nokia’s Maemo platform and the Nokia-owned cross platform application environment, Qt.

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