Windows Phone to BlackBerry: Nyah nyah!
Who's No. 3? Why, it's Windows Phone, solidifying its bronze medal status. Plus: Global smartphones sales hit 225 million, edging out feature phones for the first time, says Gartner.
Windows Phone has swiped third place from BlackBerry among all mobile smartphone platforms, Gartner said in a report out Wednesday.
For the second quarter, Microsoft's mobile OS scored a market share of 3.3 percent, up from 2.6 percent in the prior year's quarter. Shipments of Windows Phone handsets --most famously embodied in Nokia's Lumia line -- jumped to 7.4 million from 4 million a year ago.
Over the same time, BlackBerry saw its market share plummet to 2.7 percent from 5.2 percent, while shipments dipped to 6.1 million from 7.9 million. Earlier this week, the beleaguered BlackBerry said it is now considering "strategic alternatives" that could include a sale of the company.
Windows Phone now seems to have firmly established itself as the bronze medalist among mobile OSes. It jumped into third place in the first quarter of the year.
Android, meanwhile, stayed firmly in the lead among mobile platforms with a second-quarter market share of 79 percent, according to Gartner. Apple's iOS remained in second place as its share dropped to 14.2 percent from 18.8 percent.
The second quarter also marked the first time that smartphones outsold features phones, according to Gartner.
Worldwide smartphone sales hit 225 million last quarter, a 46.5 percent leap from the same quarter last year. Over the same time, feature phone sales fell to 210 million, a decline of 21 percent. Smartphones saw their biggest growth in Asia/Pacific at 74.1 percent, Latin America at 55.7 percent, and Eastern Europe at 31.6 percent.
"Smartphones accounted for 51.8 percent of mobile phone sales in the second quarter of 2013, resulting in smartphone sales surpassing feature phone sales for the first time," Gartner research analyst Anshul Gupta said in a statement.
Overall, mobile phone sales reached 435 million last quarter, up 3.6 percent from the prior year.
