While Android (81.7 %) and iOS (17.9 %) have absolute control over the smartphone market, Blackberry’s percentage is now officially 0.0 %. Windows came crashing down from 1.1 % to a mere 0.3 %.
432 million smartphones
With 99.6 % of the market share in the hands of the two major operating systems, other companies are easily overlooked. In 2016’s fourth quarter, Windows saw its already tiny market share more than halved, while Blackberry did even worse at 0.0481 % (down from 0.2 %). Prior to Apple’s breakaway success with the iPhone, Blackberry was the world’s most used operating system, but sales have been in a never-ending downward spiral ever since. In September, the company was even forced to announce that it would no longer manufacture smartphones, but only issue licenses to third parties.
According to Gartner’s statistics, fourth quarter smartphone sales grew considerably compared to 2015’s fourth quarter, from 403 to 432 million smartphones. Android and iOS’ domination is clear: on top of 352.7 million Android-powered smartphones, Apple sold 77 million iPhones. The huge difference between the leading operating systems can easily be explained through their distribution approach: whereas iOS is only available on Apple devices, Android is freely available and can therefore be found on pretty much every non-Apple device.
