Is there anything common between two companies in Ontario and Espoo? They are poles apart-the former is in Canada and the latter is in Finland. But the answer is not that simple- it is from these geographies a sort of mobile revolution was unleased the last many years- RIM, the makers of the globally renowned Blackberry smartphones and Nokia-the iconic company that dominated with its Symbian phones. But sadly both companies today are at struggling in their own unique ways and their supreme position severely compromised by the folks in Mountain View and Cupertino- the seat of Google and Apple.
Looking at the latest global data released by market researcher IDC, the smartphone market has clearly become bi-polar with Apple iOS and Google Android occupying the pole position. If one has to go by the IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, it says: " Android and iOS powered 85% of all smartphones shipped in the second quarter of 2012 (2Q12), establishing a new combined high for the mobile operating systems from Google and Apple. Meanwhile, BlackBerry and Symbian, two pioneers and former leaders of the smartphone market, both saw their market shares fall below 5%. Android amassed a commanding 68.1% market share of all smartphones shipped during the quarter, while BlackBerry and Symbian reached just 4.8% and 4.4% respectively".
Clearly once front benchers have become tail enders and reflecting on this trend, Kevin Restivo, senior research analyst with IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker said, "The mobile OS market is now unquestionably a two-horse race due to the dominance of Android and iOS. With much of the world's mobile phone user base still operating feature phones, the smartphone OS market share battle is far from over. There is still room for some mobile OS competitors to gain share, although such efforts will become increasingly difficult as smartphone penetration increases."
Operating System Highlights as per IDC
Android's success in the market can be traced directly to Samsung, which accounted for 44.0% of all Android smartphones shipped in 2Q12 and totaled more than the next seven Android vendors' volumes combined. Meanwhile, the next seven vendors were a mix of companies re-establishing their strategies or growing volumes within key markets. Also not to be overlooked was the growing relevance of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich with the release of numerous models worldwide.
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