Smartphones continued their climb toward mobile phone dominance during the last quarter, with shipments jumping 74 percent from the same time last year. And while Android edged closer to 50 percent global market share, Microsoft struggled to gain traction with its Windows Phone platform, according to data from Gartner.
Microsoft shipped approximately 1.7 million smartphones during the second quarter, which was down from just over 3 million during the same time period last year. At that point, Microsoft was still focusing on Windows Mobile and had not yet released Windows Phone 7, which made its debut in October, but it's been a slow start for the new mobile OS. At the end of the second quarter, Microsoft had 1.6 percent of the global smartphone market, down from 4.9 percent last year.
Beating out Microsoft's OS was Samsung's bada platform, which captured 1.9 percent of the global smartphone market last quarter, up from 0.9 percent last year. Samsung shipped just over 2 million devices with bada, which was introduced in February 2010.
On the top of the smartphone OS totem pole was Google's Android, which captured 43.4 percent of the global market, a major leap from the 17.2 percent it had last year. Handset makers shipped more than 46 million Android-based smartphones, up from about 11 million last year.
Symbian came in second with 22.1 percent market share, but that was a big drop from the 40.9 percent it had a year ago. Edging ever closer to Symbian was Apple's iOS with 18.2 percent, up from 14.1 percent last year.
"Google and Apple are the obvious winners in the smartphone ecosystem," Gartner said. "The combined share of iOS and Android in the smartphone operating system (OS) market doubled to nearly 62 percent in the second quarter of 2011, up from just over 31 percent in the corresponding period of 2010."
The platforms' popularity can be tied to their usability and apps, Gartner said.
In the middle, meanwhile, was Research in Motion with 11.7 percent of the global smartphone market, down from 18.7 percent last year.
In terms of handset makers, Nokia was number one but that was also about an 8 percent drop. Samsung, LG, Apple, and ZTE rounded out the top five handset makers.
"Smartphone sales continued to rise at the expense of feature phones," said Roberta Cozza, principal research analyst at Gartner. "Consumers in mature markets are choosing entry-level and midrange Android smartphones over feature phones, partly due to carriers’ and manufacturers’ promotions."
Overall, smartphones made up 25 percent of all mobile phone sales, up 17 percent from last year.