Research by Gartner suggests that sales of smartphones have exceeded those of feature phones for the first time. While global smartphone sales have increased by 3.6 to 435 million in the second quarter of 2013 compared to the same period last year, according to Gartner’s own figures, smartphones make up 225 million of the total, a year-on-year increase of 46.5 percent, with feature phones seeing a 21-percent year-on-year decline to 210 million units.
Android devices make up 79 percent of the smartphone operating system market on 177.9 million units, while iOS takes second place with 31.9 million units sold and a 14.2-percent share, an increase from the 28.9 million sold in the second quarter of 2012. Windows Phone has been promoted to third place above BlackBerry, with 3.3 percent and 2.7 percent respectively, while Bada decreased from 2.7-percent to 0.4 percent, and Symbian hit 0.3 percent from the 5.9-percent it was at last year.
In terms of individual manufacturers, Samsung increased its market share to 31.7 percent from 29.7 percent, and remains ahead of Apple. LG trails at 5.1 percent from an earlier 3.8 percent, with Lenovo increasing from 2.8 percent to 4.7 percent, overtaking the now 5th place ZTE and its change from 4.1 percent last year to 4.3 percent this year.
For the most part, the top companies increased their sales as well as their market share, though there are exceptions. While BlackBerry sales dropped from just under 8 million to 6.2 million for the quarter, the market share dropped to its current 2.7-percent allocation from 5.2 percent.
