Almost 60% of all smartphones sold in the first quarter were Android-powered, according to IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker. Apple’s iOS phones accounted for another 23% of sales volume, giving the top two operating systems a combined total market share of almost 75%.
Samsung is the engine behind Android’s success, accounting for 45% of the Android phones sold in the first quarter. Samsung recently surpassed Apple as the world’s top smartphone vendor, and took Nokia’s position as the world’s leading seller of mobile phones. The Symbian and BlackBerry operating systems each had roughly 7% of the market, followed by Linux at 2.3% and Windows at 2.2%.
IDC says that 152 million smartphones were sold worldwide in the first quarter of 2012, which was down sequentially from the 158 million sold during the fourth quarter of 2011.
Analysts expect the Windows Phone smartphone operating system to gain ground in the months ahead. Nokia, maker of the Windows-based Lumia phones, is no longer designing new smartphones for the Symbian operating system, so Symbian’s market share should continue to decline.
