As Samsung falls to Apple, Android global market share is still on the rise

Trusted technology research and advisory company Gartner has released its latest smartphone market share report today, and while the numbers spell bad news for Samsung (as bad as being the number two smartphone manufacturer in the world can be), Android is still on the rise globally.

According to Gartner, Samsung was ousted from its position as number one smartphone manufacturer globally in the fourth quarter of 2014. Samsung managed to sell 73 million smartphones in Q4 2014, while Apple managed to eke out a win by selling 74.8 millions iPhones. Those numbers don’t seem drastic on their own, but consider that in Q3 2013, Samsung sold 83 million devices and Apple sold 50 million, and things start looking worse for Samsung. Just how much of an impact the revamped Galaxy S6 will have on this year’s numbers is it yet to be seen, but it may just be what Samsung needs to boost sales.

As far as market share by platform goes, Android is still absolutely crushing the competition. Android now holds 80.7 percent of the total market, up from 78.5 percent last year, and Apple holds 15.4 percent of the market, down from 15.5 percent last year. The bulk of Android’s gain comes from Blackberry, Windows and other platforms.

2014 was quite a year. Anyone who predicted that Apple releasing a bigger iPhone would have a major impact on the industry was right. But if they thought it was going to slow down Android right away, they missed the mark.

source: androidandme