Nearly Three Quarters of Smartphones Sold in Q1 Run Android

Market research firm Gartner has released figures for the worldwide smartphone market during the first quarter of 2013. Unsurprisingly, Google's popular Android mobile operating system continued its dominance of the market. In fact, nearly three quarters of all smartphones sold during this period run Android, equating to about 156 million Android devices sold.

This represents a percentage almost 20 percent higher than the same period a year ago.

These numbers seem to fall in line with another recent Gartner report, which expects that Android phone shipments will reach 861 million by the end of this year. The firm even expects the number of devices running Android to surpass the number of Windows devices in the world by the end of 2016, with 2.3 billion Android devices compared to 2.28 billion Windows devices.

Overall, there were 210 million smartphones of all types sold during Q1, which is an increase of 63 million units compared to 2012's first quarter. Meanwhile, the total number of mobile phones sold — including smartphones and feature phones — was 425 million, meaning smartphones made up nearly half of all mobile phones sales. In terms of sheer sales numbers, Samsung seems to be the top manufacturer.

Indeed, Samsung sold more Android smartphones than any other manufacturer so far this year. While the company didn't offer any sales numbers of its own for Q1, Gartner estimates the Korean manufacturer made 31 percent of all smartphones sold during the first three months of this year. The iPhone, meanwhile, accounted for 18 percent of smartphone sales, putting Apple in the number two manufacturer spot.

Since Samsung and Apple were within 5 percent of one another only a year ago, this suggests that Android is growing at the expense of iOS market share. However, Gartner expects that the launch of a new iPhone this year will put the two rivals within closer market share proximity.