Android continues to push global smartphone market, says Gartner

By Eric Brown

Global end user sales of smartphones were up 74 percent year-on-year in the second quarter, reports Gartner in its latest study. Smartphones were said to represent 25 percent of the 428.7 million mobile devices sold in the quarter, up from 17 percent in the second quarter of 2011.

"Smartphone sales continued to rise at the expense of feature phones," stated Roberta Cozza, principal research analyst at Gartner. "Consumers in mature markets are choosing entry-level and midrange Android smartphones over feature phones, partly due to carriers’ and manufacturers’ promotions."

Indeed, Android was the big winner, both in quarter-to-quarter and year-to-year momentum. Of the other mobile operating systems, only Apple's iOS and Samsung's Bada gained ground. According to Gartner, Android represented 43.4 percent share of smartphone sales -- a major increase from the 36 percent Gartner estimated for the first quarter.

When ABI Research recently pegged Android's second quarter global smartphone shipment share at 46.4 percent, we were skeptical. But then Canalys reported Android's 2Q share at 48 percent. Although Gartner's estimate is three to five percentage points below that, when one considers that Gartner tracks end-user sales while ABI and Canalys track shipments, the studies tend to align.

Android's global smartphone share was just 17.2 percent in 2Q 2010, moving up to 28.7 percent in the fourth quarter, according to previous Gartner reports.

Apple iOS, meanwhile, moved to 18.2 percent share in 2Q 2011, up from 16.8 percent last quarter, says Gartner. That still puts iOS in third place behind Nokia's Symbian, which dropped to 22.1 percent, down from 27.4 percent last quarter and 40.9 percent a year ago. The BlackBerry platform offered by Research in Motion (RIM) slipped to 11.7 percent from last quarter's 12.9 percent, says the study.

Microsoft's platforms, which presumably include Windows Mobile in addition to Windows Phone 7, saw the largest percentage decrease from the previous quarter. Microsoft dropped to 1.6 percent from 3.6 percent, says the research firm.

In fact, Microsoft fell below Samsung's Bada, which scored 1.9 percent. Gartner didn't list Bada last quarter, but the platform was said to have grown from 0.9 percent year over year. (In the U.S., one doesn't hear much about Bada, an OS-agnostic middleware platform that is often paired with a Linux kernel.)

Gartner also broke down the market by vendor, but only for total mobile devices, which also includes feature phones. It's unclear whether this includes tablets, although Gartner makes no mention of them in its discussion.

Yet, Samsung's numbers dropped to 16.3 percent compared to 17.8 percent the year before, and "grew only marginally quarter-on-quarter," says Gartner. While the research firm acknowledges that Samsung's Galaxy S II (pictured) and other high-end Android phones enjoyed brisk sales, Samsung's "weaker presence in more price-sensitive market segments" was said to have limited unit sales.

No other vendor comes close to Nokia and Samsung. While LG's third-place 5.7 percent share represents a year-over-year drop, Apple almost doubled its share to 4.6 percent for fourth place. Apple is the seventh-largest mobile phone vendor in China, and the third-largest smartphone vendor, says Gartner.

Meanwhile, Chinese vendor ZTE soared to fifth place in mobile devices, barely edging out RIM. Farther down, China's Huawei also moved up, and Taiwan's HTC saw a big boost, as well.

Gartner did not offer a regional breakdown in its announcement, but noted that smartphone sales in Western Europe declined from the first quarter -- a possible reflection of recent economic turmoil. Overall, sales of mobile devices will grow around 12 percent in 2011, down from the 16.5 percent year-over-year growth indicated in 2Q 2011, says the research firm,

"We expect manufacturers and distributors to remain cautious about raising their stock levels in the second half of 2011, following the recent uncertainty on the world financial markets," stated Annette Zimmermann, principal research analyst at Gartner.

The Gartner report "Market Share: Mobile Communication Devices by Region and Country, 2Q11," is available now for a cool $9,995.