‘Almost 85 percent of delivered smartphones worldwide run Android’

Android has further expanded its market share in the smartphone market, analyst firm Strategy Analytics has calculated. Nearly 85 percent of the smartphones delivered worldwide now run on Android.

This means Android has its highest share of the smartphone market to date; the figures from Strategy Analytics, which the analyst firm sometimes publishes and sometimes does not, show a dip every year in the last months of the year, as Apple releases its devices and sells more. Despite this, the share of Android is still rising. iOS has a share of almost 12 percent, while Windows Phone does not go beyond 2.7 percent.

The analyst firm sees no end to growth for the time being: it only lists the upcoming big phones from Apple and Firefox OS as threats to Android. Strategy Analytics makes no breakdown by how many of the Android devices have Google services on board. Especially in China and Russia, Android devices without Google services are on the rise. Some analysts do make that distinction, although applications are generally largely compatible, but many applications also rely on Google’s APIs and therefore do not work on devices without Google services.

For smartphone operating system figures, analyst firms are the only option. Many manufacturers do not state how many devices they supply with which operating system. In addition, many manufacturers, such as market leader Samsung, do not mention at all how many smartphones they supply.