Android’s momentum is still going strong, as the latest Gartner numbers said the platform had 52.5 percent of worldwide smartphone sales to end users for the third quarter of 2011. That’s a rather impressive figure and it’s even more impressive when you consider that Gartner said its market share in this category doubled from the same period last year.
Nokia’s Symbian platform remained in second place with 16.9 percent but it was followed closely by Apple’s iOS at 15 percent. Research In Motion came in next at 11 percent but that’s a drop of about four points from the same period last year. Samsung was the top smartphone seller for the quarter followed by Apple but you have to remember that the third quarter didn’t include the iPhone 4s. Needless to say, Gartner expects Apple to be the largest smartphone seller during the fourth quarter.
Overall, Nokia is still the world’s largest cell phone maker, followed by Samsung, LG, Apple and then ZTE. Research In Motion, HTC and Motorola take up the next few slots. Even though Apple isn’t at the top of any of these lists, it still claims the most profits out of any vendor, so don’t shed any tears for it.
So, to sum it up, Android is still hot, iOS was still popular and should only rise with the iPhone 4S and Symbian and BlackBerry OS are on the way down. Yep, it’s about what you’d expect.
