A new report by market research company Strategy Analytics, has revealed that 2014 shipments of Android smartphones exceeded one billion units.
This is significantly more than Android’s nearest competitor, Apple’s iOS, which managed to ship around 193 million smartphones globally in 2014.
The shipment of Android smartphones in 2014 contributed to a record increase in shipments of smartphones worldwide, which saw the market grow by 30 per cent from 2013, with a total of 1.3 billion smartphones shipped worldwide.
The smartphone market is essentially a two horse race between Android and iOS. However, whilst Apple enjoys around a 15 per cent share of the market with its iOS operating system, Google’s Android OS is currently used on 81 per cent of smartphones around the world.
Of course, iOS is only available on Apple devices but part of Google’s strength with Android is that is available on so many devices, from budget or entry level smartphones right up to the flagship devices of the world’s leading manufacturers.
The success of Android is also further fuelled by the fact that it features on the devices which are now penetrating the emerging market of the likes of China, India and Indonesia.
Even with Android’s dominance of the market, it’s fair to say that Apple hasn’t been doing too bad itself lately, having announced the biggest quarterly profits ever made by a public listed company earlier this week.
Data from Strategy Analytics also found that Apple’s share of the smartphone market when broken down by brand was the same as Samsung’s, and had increased by 20 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2014.
Whilst Apple celebrated a hugely successful 2014, thanks to sales of iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, the same can’t be said for Samsung.
Despite posting profits of almost $4.8 billion, Samsung recorded yet another decline in overall operating profits.
Outside of iOS and Android smartphones, Microsoft’s Windows Phone OS has around 3 per cent of the smartphone market, which still accounts for some 39 million phones worldwide. All other operating systems are so low that they are merely thrown into the category of “others”.
