Matti Robinson
19 Jul 2017 11:50
Market research company IDC has posted new figures for mobile platforms and smartphone vendors. Figures representing the first quarter of 2017 reveal a story of a nearly perfect duopoly.
There are of course dozens of smartphone manufacturers, albeit five most populous vendors take up almost 60 percent of the total market, but when it comes to smartphone platforms it's a different type of ball game.
Android is, of course, dominating the platform wars in pure device numbers. 85 percent of new smartphones came with Android, while iOS (read: iPhone) came second with 14.7 percentage points. Windows Phone was third with 0.1 percent and Others, including Samsung's Tizen, managed to get another 0.1 percent.
Essentially the numbers could be simplified to the closest percentage point: Android 85%, iOS 15%, Others 0%.
Obviously this is hardly anything new. Windows has been in decline for quite some time, and so have others. Android, however, managed to gain point and a half while iPhone lost 0.7 percentage points from year ago. At that point Windows still had 0.8% and other 0.4% shares.
IDC expect Apple to rise again in Q4 and especially early next year when the new iPhone models are reaching customers.
When it comes to vendors, Samsung is back in the number one spot with 23.3%. After iPhone's 14.7% the Chinese manufacturers have been gaining ground with Huawei at 10%, OPPO at 7.5%, and Vivo at 5.5%.
All in all, 334.3 million smartphones were shipped worldwide.