It was just last year that analysts felt the Android platform was reaching its peak in the U.S. One such company, Strategy Analytics predicted that we may have approached “peak Android” for how big a market share the operating system may be able to attain in the U.S. market.
It appears that there may have still been a little wiggle room towards the top of that peak. The Android platform does appear to keep reaching just a little higher. It is evident from the latest figures to be released by the Gartner Group.
The numbers do show that Android is continuing to grow on a global level. While the platform may still be growing, the thing that may have reached a saturation point is Samsung devices. Samsung smartphones continue to be in the lead however, it did not grow in the third quarter staying at 32 percent of the market share.
If we take a look at the overall figures we see that there were 455.6 million mobile phones sold this quarter. This is a rise of about 5.7 percent, leading the way was smartphones. What we see is that devices which are running Android, iOS, Window Phone, BlackBerry and a few other operating systems accounted for 250 million handsets.
This represents the majority coming in at 55 percent of the total. When we compare this to third quarter last year, there were only 171 million smartphone sales. This only represented about a 40 percent share of the total.
These numbers are on track with the total of 1.81 billion mobile phones sales that are expect by the end of the year. Gartner points out that with the recent large screen smartphones coming out on the market that people may be looking at smaller tablets instead of larger phones.
Anshul Gupta, principal research analyst at Gartner comments that “We will see several new tablets enter the market for the holiday season and we expect consumers in mature markets will favor the purchase of smaller-sized tablets over the replacement of their older smartphones.”
When we take a closer look at the regions, it really comes as no surprise that Asia Pacific and more specifically China, lead the way in overall sales. In particular, they are the driving force pushing Android further ahead.
The estimation from Gartner is that 41 percent of all Android sales in Q3 can be attributed to mainland China. This is a major increase from last year’s figures which had China at 34 percent. Gartner does make note of the fact that other regions like the Americas and Western Europe are also showing growth.
Apple rose by one percentage point. This comes is not too shocking since it only sells smartphones since there are no feature iPhones on the market, Gupta said, “While the arrival of the new iPhones 5s and 5c had a positive impact on overall sales, such impact could have been greater had they not started shipping late in the quarter. While we saw some inventory built up for the iPhone 5c, there was good demand for iPhone 5s with stock out in many markets.”
In response as to why Samsung is not performing better (although being at the top isn’t a bad spot) Gartner points to design. There have been some criticisms that have followed Android over the years. Probably the biggest is that it is not as user friendly as Apple’s iOS platform.
“While Samsung has started to address its user experience, better design is another area where Samsung needs to focus. Samsung’s recent joint venture with carbon fiber company SGL Group could bring improvements in this area in future products,” is what Gupta said.
The following chart shows a breakdown of worldwide mobile phone sales:
(Click to enlarge)
If you look at the following chart, you will notice that Lenovo is becoming a player as it passes LG for the number three spot with 12.9 million smartphones sold.
According to Gupta, “The winner of this quarter is Microsoft, which grew 123 percent.” He said that the Microsoft deal to acquire the devices and services business is a good thing because it will “unify effort and help drive appeal of [the] Windows ecosystem.”
Edited by
Alisen Downey 
QUICK LINKS 
