Android Continues to Dominate: Smartphone Marketshare Now at 72.4%

Gartner has this week posted its Q3 mobile device sales report, and there’s quite a bit to note here. Probably most interesting but least surprising is the fact that Android now owns 72.4% of the entire smartphone market, up from 52.5% one year ago. Apple’s iOS takes second place with a share of 13.9, while BlackBerry OS settles in third with 5.3%. The remaining competition owns a combined 8.4%, with a mere 2.4% of that belonging to Microsoft.

Despite the fact that Apple shipped 36% more units during the last quarter compared to one year ago, its marketshare declined 1.1%. This has everything to do with the fact that Android simply dominates at the moment. With its high margins, I’m not too sure Apple will care about this decline, but Research in Motion sure won’t see things the same way. Its share one year ago was 11%, and it now sits at 5.3%. That is a very scary decline, especially when you consider that its total units shipped is just 70% of what it was during Q3 2011.

The total number of smartphone units shipped this past Q3 vs. last year’s increased 46.9% – a staggering boost to say the least.

Unlike Apple, Google and its Android platform relies on numerous vendors to help make succeed, and Gartner has a break-down of that information as well. In the overall phone market, Samsung is the current leader with a 22.9% share. Nokia follows that in second with 19.2%, but it’s largely dominated by non-smartphones. In that market, Nokia has been seeing a rapid decline, slipping from the 3rd spot to the 7th in a single quarter.

Apple, with 5.5% of the total phones shipped, places third. As the list goes down, we pass ZTE, LG, Huawei, TCL, RIM, Motorola, HTC and then “Other”, which consists of 34.2% of the total.

It’s interesting to note that while Android and others saw some nice gains since one year ago, the overall smartphone market has declined 3% – a decline Gartner expects to be negated soon based on a strong third quarter.