Smartphone sales soar - Android accelerates aggressively

Stephen Withers
Friday, 13 August 2010 09:12

Your IT - Mobility

A report from a leading analyst shows smartphone sales surging by 50%. While Symbian, BlackBerry and iPhone saw healthy growth, Google's Android OS is the platform that's really piling on the units.

According to analyst firm Gartner, smartphone sales grew by 50% year-on-year in the second calendar quarter of 2010. Total worldwide sales to end users jumped from 40,971,800 to 61,649,100.

Comparing platforms, the big winner was Android, which rocketed from 755,900 units (1.8% market share) to 10,606,100 (17.2%).

Android is already the leading smartphone operating system in the US, according to Gartner. The firm attributes Android's rapid growth to the backing of many device manufacturers and the sale of handsets through multiple service providers.

But worldwide, Android is still a long way behind Symbian, which increased sales by over 4 million units to 25,386,800 units, for a market share of 41.2%.

RIM's BlackBerry platform is still in second place. An additional 3 million-plus unit sales lifted its volume to 11,228,800 units, but that wasn't enough to prevent a drop in market share from 19.0% to 18.2%.

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