14 DAY TRIAL // Google’s Android operating system has accounted for the largest portion of smartphone shipments during the last year, a recent report from Strategy Analytics suggests.
According to the research firm, the mobile OS was loaded on 79 percent of all such devices shipped last year.
Moreover, the smartphone market is said to have seen a growth of 41 percent in 2013 when compared to the previous year, and to have totaled 990 million units.
Moreover, the report unveils that the overall smartphone shipments went up 34 percent YOY in Q4 2013, reaching 290.2 million units (up from 217.0 million units the year before).
“Global smartphone shipments for the full year were just shy of the 1 billion level, but they nonetheless reached a record 990.0 million units in 2013, increasing from 700.1 million in 2012,” a recent blog post from Strategy Analytics reads.
“Global smartphone shipment growth decreased slightly from 43 percent in 2012 to 41% in 2013, due to high penetration in some major markets like the United States.”
781.2 million smartphones shipped last year were running under the Android operating system, four times more devices than Apple and Microsoft combined.
However, the platform’s growth slowed to only 62 percent last year, which is the lowest it has ever registered. Moving forth, Android should see even slower increase, due to market saturation and the rise of rivals such as Windows Phone and Firefox OS.
Apple’s iOS saw went up 13 percent in 2013, with 153.4 million smartphones shipped worldwide, reaching a 15 percent market share.
Windows Phone, on the other hand, managed to ship only 35.7 million units worldwide, and grabbed a 4 percent market share in 2013.
“However, the Windows Phone platform is still struggling to gain traction in the low-tier and premium-tier smartphone categories and they remain serious weaknesses that Microsoft will need to address in 2014,” Strategy Analytics concluded.