Android, iOS nab 82 percent of smartphone market in Q1

Android smartphone shipments soared 145 percent in the first quarter to 89.9 million units. Apple's iPhone hit unit shipments of 35.1 million.

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Don Reisinger

May 24, 2012 9:14 a.m. PT

2 min read

Android and iOS are stealing mobile market share at a shocking rate, new data from research firm IDC has revealed.

During the first quarter, Android and iOS combined to secure 82 percent of the smartphone market. Android-based device vendors shipped 89.9 million smartphones last quarter, jumping 145 percent year over year. Apple's iPhone shipments soared by 88.7 percent to land at 35.1 million units.

Android and iOS shipments hit 36.7 million units and 18.6 million units, respectively, during the first quarter of 2011. At that time, the platforms owned 54.4 percent of the market.

So, which operating systems were hit hard in the last 12 months? According to IDC, Symbian shipments were down 60.6 percent year-over-year last quarter, to end the period at 10.4 million units. RIM's BlackBerry smartphone shipments fell by 29.7 percent to 9.7 million units.

"The popularity of Android and iOS stems from a combination of factors that the competition has struggled to keep up with," Ramon Llamas, senior research analyst with IDC's Mobile Phone Technology and Trends program, said today in a statement. "Neither Android nor iOS were the first to market with some of these features, but the way they made the smartphone experience intuitive and seamless has quickly earned a massive following."

Microsoft's Windows Phone was one of the more surprising winners last quarter, as shipments jumped 26.9 percent to 3.3 million units. However, the platform could only tally 2.2 percent market share. What's worse, IDC doesn't expect to see too much growth in that figure in the coming quarters.

"Until Nokia speeds the cadence of its smartphone releases or more vendors launch their own Windows Phone-powered smartphones, IDC anticipates slow growth for the operating system," the research firm wrote today in a statement.

Even though power in the smartphone space is consolidating, the market is growing at an extremely fast clip. During the first quarter of 2011, 101.6 million smartphones hit store shelves. Last quarter, that figure jumped to 152.3 million, representing 50 percent growth year over year.