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

Posted by BeauHD on from the duopoly dept.

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?

8 of 191 comments (clear)

  1. Blackberry by maliqua · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Well since blackberry has started using android on its new devices its not even slightly surprising that BB OS is losing market share, i'd be more interested to see if blackberry's market share has gone up or down as a device maker since the switch

  2. Re:We live in a 2 OS society by im_thatoneguy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The question is can Google move Android/Chrome to the desktop fast enough to capitalize on their phone dominance. Apple isn't showing any interest in OSX anymore. Linux has to wait for someone to win and then copy.

    Essentially you have Google and Microsoft in a duel where the first to finish assembling the gun in front of them wins. It looks like nothing is happening but as soon as one of them gets an OS and app library that solves both desktop and mobile the race will be over in a near instant.

    Major innovation started and stopped with the shift to capacitive touch/multi-touch touch screens and the availability of 2G Edge data. People scoff at Windows Mobile 5 using a stylus, but anyone who has tried to use a resistive touch screen with their finger knows why styluses were necessary. Apple got there first but their first-mover success is rapidly evaporating and they've lost all advantage they once had on hardware quality and design both in mobile and the desktop market.

    So the question becomes who gets Photoshop first? Windows Mobile as a Universal Application or Google as an android app for the Chromebook?

  3. Windows Phone by fredgiblet · · Score: 3, Interesting

    WP has what it takes, but it got it too late, had too many missteps along the way and lost the mindshare war. So the only way it can make a dent is if one of the others takes a dive.

    1. Re:Windows Phone by PhrostyMcByte · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Huge missteps mostly recently. Windows Phone 7 through 8.1 were fantastic -- always smooth as butter, responsive, relatively bug-free, had a great UI, and had fantastic tools for devs. I also own several high-end Android devices and if you could live with less apps I really do think Windows Phone was superior to Android.

      10 was a huge step back -- no longer smooth and incredibly buggy. I got a Lumia 950 to replace my aging 920 and only now a year later with the Anniversary release can I say it is something they should sell, but it's still only comparable to Android levels of smoothness. I really miss the lag-free 8.1 OS.

  4. 12% is dangerously low by OpenSourced · · Score: 4, Interesting

    12% market share approaches the danger zone. For some applications, perhaps just 5% of your potential public will use iOS. Then you don't develop the iOS version. Market dominance snowballs in this kind of situations, as we regrettably know from the Windows story.

    --
    Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
    1. Re:12% is dangerously low by danbob999 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The problem is Apple hasn't done anything interesting since, well, the iPhone 4. The iPhone 4 brought high-DPI displays to smartphones. It was badly needed.

      High DPI displays weren't needed. What was needed (and still is) is high resolution displays. A 1" high-DPI display would be useless. A 2 megapixel display can fit a lot of content no matter its size. It looks good on a 70" TV as well as on a 5" phone. Of course, you don't watch TV from the same distance as you hold your phone.

      DPI was a gimmick, just like retina.
      Up to the iPhone 3GS, the standard resolution on phones was 320x480. Apple had some of the largest displays at 3.5". The first Androids had 3.2" displays with the same resolution. Nobody ever thought on bragging that the DPI was higher on Android. It would have been dumb.
      Then Android makers started releasing larger phones with higher resolution displays, such as the original Droid (854x480, 3.7"). It was a huge improvement over what existed before. Apple wanted to be back in the game, so they released a phone with an even higher resolution (960x640) which was of course even better. Except that since Android makers were releasing 4" phones and Apple was stuck at 3.5", they had to brag about something. So they "invented" (for all practical purposes, since nobody used the term before in the smartphone market) DPI (also refereed to as PPI). Since they now had the smallest displays, even if Android makers reached the same resolution, they would have less DPI so the iPhone would be "superior". Unfortunately, many reviewers bought into that crap and even some people on slashdot.

  5. Re:We live in a 2 OS society by rtb61 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Nah, there is no such thing as an operating system for typical consumer targeted appliances, it pretty much disappears in the background. M$ is dead on consumer appliances and with the Windows 10 probe leaving a permanent memory of 'M$ watching you masturbate' in everyone's minds, never able to cum (tee hee) back. Android with it's someone messy java layer looks to be a lock in. Now can that java layer be fixed to provide better access for high end games and be an extension to a more typical Linux distribution like Ubuntu, to provide greater access to interactive content.

    Apple of course is not so much loosing market share, their high end market remains the same, they are simply not picking up the rapidly expanding low end of the market for smart phones, where the much more competitive and diverse Android systems are taking by storm (so larger market and Apples percentage drops but they retain the same sales because their part of the market was already buying smart phones years ago). Apple pushing privacy was a really smart well timed moved and did real damage to M$ on consumer products (they now hate using windows no matter what the public relations firms claim, that whole windows anal probe 10 a really stupid move by M$ and now demanding people pay for the probe even more insulting, paying to have their privacy stolen, talk about arrogance, mind boggling).

    --
    Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
  6. Re:classic chicken and egg. by tgv · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I bought a Windows phone (last year) because I don't like Android (bad experiences with Samsung and Moto), and iOS phones are too expensive. And I don't need all those apps. I just want to make a few calls, use internet from time to time, and perhaps look at a map, or send/read a few messages. That's it. Windows is perfectly fine for that, and the phones are competitively priced.

    I guess there are not many like me.