iOS and Android Combined For Record 99% of Smartphone Sales Last Quarter (macrumors.com)

An anonymous reader writes: The research firm Gartner has crunched some numbers and found that Android and iOS accounted for a record 99.1% worldwide market share in the second calendar quarter of 2016, which is compared to 96.8% in the year-ago period. What some may view as even more shocking is that Android accounted for 86.2% of the market share in the second quarter, up from 82.2% a year ago. Meanwhile, iOS lost some ground as it dropped to 12.9% market share from 14.6% in the year-ago period. It's no surprise that Windows and BlackBerry have been losing market share. They dropped to 0.6% and 0.1% market share worldwide respectively. Just six years ago, BlackBerry and Symbian operating systems were industry leaders. Now, they're industry losers. Which third-party operating system has what it takes to take on the establishment?

Comments

classic chicken and egg.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody buys X because there's little software support, and nobody even knows it exists due to lack of market buzz. There's little software support and no market buzz because nobody buys X.

Pretty hard to break out of that cycle. Sometimes it happens, but often out of sheer luck more than anything that can be intentionally duplicated. It was tried with Tizen, Maemo, FirefoxOS, and others, and all failed.

These things tend to change over long times. We're just now after many decades ending the Windows monopoly with the average person moving to Android and iOS, and consoles replacing Windows in the gaming space. It will probably be decades before something seriously challenges the big-two mobile OS out there right now. Of course it could happen sooner, but it doesn't seem like a good bet.

Re:classic chicken and egg.

[Opportunist]

Well, not to say it ain't so, but in this case you're looking at a market where the two current top dogs were rather late to the party and benefited from everyone else dropping the ball big time.

Nokia was the de facto market leader but simply snoozed when the big change towards touch screens set in.
Blackberry had the enterprise market firmly in their grasp, and not only did they have a lot of features enterprise users wanted, they also managed to make having a Blackberry as a manager an important status symbol. A decade ago you pretty much HAD to have a Blackberry to be taken serious in management circles. Look where they're now after a series of blunders and hubris.
And while MS never really had a big market share in the phone business, they had every advantage on their side, they have the de facto standard on desktops and could have worked out something huge with phone + computer tie-ins, in a depth nobody else could achieve. They finally try that but ... too little, too late, and all the accomplish by it now is to piss off their desktop users.

So, I cannot really say that this is one of those scenarios where the early bird gets the worm, grows big and keeps everyone else in its shadow so they can't grow as well. There were some serious mistakes made by the former market leaders and other competitors. Google and Apple won because they were able to predict better where the market is going and what consumers and business customers alike would want.

That can change rapidly again. We're today at the point where cellphones get powerful enough to replace netbooks soon. My prediction would be that the manufacturer that manages to find the right gadget at the right time to capitalize on this and offer something that could make the cellphone replace current netbooks, you have the next market leader.

Android is now officially the new Windows

[toadlife]

I could see this years ago when Android was still very flaky POS and iOS completely dominated the smart phone landscape. The parallels between the Android/iOS market and Mac/PC market were too many for it turn out any other way.

third-party operating systems

[Anonymous Coward]

A third-party operating system is nice and all, but what we really need is a third party that primarily has the interests of its users in mind. By now I am convinced any other large corporation cannot be that party. They would just turn into another Apple, Google or Microsoft, quickly morphing their OS into a tool to treat the users as cows to be milked instead of users.

Unfortunately I do not see anyone else having the deep pockets required to actually make a change, and the public at large is much to lethargic to care, let alone do something about it.

I want maemo back!

[Anonymous Coward]

The spirit of maemo/MeeGo or even ugh Tizen. And not manufacturers bloatware and walled gardens :(

Re:12% is dangerously low

[Nemyst]

Bear in mind that this is sales, not install base. iOS still has a big install base and they seem to be bigger spenders than Android users in terms of apps.

Doubt it

[toadlife]

Apple has done fine on the OSX side with less than 10% share for more than a decade now. Yes, there are many more apps for Windows than OSX, yet their share has been remarkably consistent.

Apple devices are marketed towards a niche segment that is outside of the commodity (Windows/Android) markets. They enjoy *much* higher profit margins than any Android phone maker. Apple users, being more affluent group, are also more likely to pay for apps in the market, which keeps developers attracted to the platform.

To paraphrase Voltaire, If Apple did not exist, it would necessary for the market to create one.