Google Inc's Android software ran on more than half of all smartphones sold in the third quarter as consumers snapped up handsets made bySamsung Electronics Co, said researcher Gartner Inc.
The Google system accounted for 52.5 per cent of smartphone sales, more than doubling its share from a year earlier, Gartner said in an e-mailed report. Even as some consumers delayed purchases to wait for Apple Inc's latest iPhone and other models, smartphone sales by volume grew 42 per cent, it said.
The Google system accounted for 52.5 per cent of smartphone sales, more than doubling its share from a year earlier, Gartner said in an e-mailed report. Even as some consumers delayed purchases to wait for Apple Inc's latest iPhone and other models, smartphone sales by volume grew 42 per cent, it said.
"Android benefited from more mass-market offerings, a weaker competitive environment, and the lack of exciting new products on alternative operating systems," Roberta Cozza, an analyst in Gartner's European unit based in Egham, England, said in the report.
Smartphones gained one percentage point from the previous quarter to 26 per cent of all mobile-phone sales. Nokia Oyj 's Symbian handsets lost almost 20 percentage points from a year earlier to account for 16.9 per cent of smartphones as the company shifted to Microsoft Corp. Windows Phone software on models scheduled to ship this month. Samsung, provider of the Galaxy line of Android smartphones, became the biggest smartphone maker for the first time.
